For as long as I can remember, my hair was the butt of jokes. Not because it isn’t pretty, but because it’s different. I have what my friends used to call “half breed” hair. Some people call it “good hair,” a term that I hate and is the name of Chris Rock’s new movie. 

Today, the four of us bloggers at weareblackwomen.com decided to write about our own hair and our history with it.

My ancestry is African, Cherokee and Irish, all of which have blended to give me very curly hair. I hated when my kinkier-haired friends would say I had “good hair” because  right behind that statement would come the term “high yellow,” which I found to be even worse. We “new world Africans” come in different hues, thus our beautiful rainbow of colors.

Down through the years, I’ve worn my hair many different ways, from short to very long and right now, in between. My hair is straight at the roots and very tight and curly at the end. I’m comfortable with it in an  afro, which I have to train to stay put, or cut next to my scalp. When I was in my teens, I learned that if I washed it with vinegar and then pin -curled it, I could have an afro as big as the world. The only problem was that if a strong wind came along, it blew a part right down the middle and then I’d look like a clown.

But I was always good at doing hair. What’s interesting is that my two sisters and I all got different blends from the same two parents. While my sister Diane has dark brown and nearly straight hair, my other sister Brenda has blond, kinky hair. Her hair is so thick and long that our mom assigned me to combing it because Brenda was also tender-headed.

Although I’m not trained in hair professionally I could always cut and braid, and when I was in my 20s I did both for friends and family for a few dollars here and there.

All of my four daughters have different hair. The eldest, Ariel, has hair exactly like mine and she wears it shoulder length and natural. Khadija has thick, kinky hair that she wears in all different styles; straightened, long or short, in braids or in a  huge, wild ’fro. Rashidah also has kinky hair, which she wears natural and cut very short. And Yasmin has in-between hair, which she is growing out from very short like her sister’s. Right now, I braid her hair with extensions.

I’ve never allowed any of my daughters to use chemical relaxer because the products are very unhealthy, both physically and psychically.  And I tell them that all hair is good, because GOD gave it to us.

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