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| ang buhok ko. my hair. (naturally curly) Photo by: Gerson Abesamis |
In middle and high school, my hair troubles worsened. I didn't know how to fix my own hair, and neither did my mom. In middle school and half of high school, I wore my hair in a very messy, high bun every single day. In middle school and high school, psychologically it FEELS like EVERYONE is watching you and cares about your hairstyles, and what brand of clothing you wear. So you can imagine how devastated I was when THE middle school bullies and the "popular" girls pointed out my bland unchanging hair. Plain and simple, I just didn't know how to style my hair--it was a monster to comb, and a hair-tie containing the frizzy monster at all times from the light of day seemed quite appropriate.
THEN my mom and I heard of relaxing. (And this was before I saw Chris Rock's "Good Hair".) When I had my hair relaxed, my hair was long, super straight, silky and even shinier than my mom's hair. But alas, the active ingredients of alkali and ammonium thioglycolate KILLED my hair. It was 3 weeks of beautiful Princess Jasmine hair and 3 years of damage to grow out.
Recently I went VIP to Rihanna's Diamonds World Tour, and I looked absolutely fabulous (of course!) with my hair looking extra beautiful from the extra attention I gave it for this special occasion. As I was belting "Where have you been" with Riri, I felt my hair being tugged and pulled on from behind me. I turned around real quick to find two middle-aged white women pulling at my hair. PAUSE. Now, before you judge me, this is while I'm learning about things like "cultural capital", "white privilege" and increasing my cultural competence in grad school--and I present this story for the purpose of rewinding, pausing, reflecting and understanding. Maybe this has happened to you, or a friend or you've done this too. (I've wanted to touch a ton of people's hair--sometimes I did with or without permission--but never to a complete stranger.) They were clearly high, and as they are touching my hair, they say to me, "OMG! Your hair is so cool! We had to touch it! Is it real? Can we touch it?"
Is it real? This question still offends me even though I've been asked this question a thousand times and then some.
Because I was having the time of my life, I wasn't offended... until the next day as I took my morning shower where I tend to do a lot of my more in-depth mundane contemplation.
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| ang buhok ko. my hair. (straightened via flat iron) Photo by: Gerson Abesamis |
As I was saying, I love being mixed and I love my hair. It is a mix of my mother's fine, silky and sometimes medium-coarse Filipino hair and my tight, rounded curls come from my African-American/Native-American paternal family.
So what do I use on my mixed hair?
My hair style in the picture to the right is a little tiny excessive dose of Suave Keratin Infusion, (or Paul Mitchell's Smoothing Super Skinny Serum) a generous handful of Herbal Essences Totally Twisted Curl Boosting Mousse and a 10-min date with my hair dryer, using my fingers as a diffuser...
I know what you are talking about, I'm multi-racial (White, Black, Asian and if you want to really get down to the nitty gritty it would be French, Irish, Scottish, Afro-Caribbean, Carib Indian, and Indian from India)
ReplyDeleteWhen I was born I had blonde hair and blue eyes, as I got older my hair and eyes changed. I had blonde-brown hair and light brown eyes. Nobody ever guessed what I was it was always Hispanic.
I couldn't do anything with my hair it was a frizzy mess and made me so hot, all through my junior high years I wore it in a ponytail till my hair roots started breaking, my mother decided we'd try relaxing it with one of those kiddie ones....did nothing!
Went to a salon for the first time and it was awesome, my hair was combable, I only went twice a year so that I wouldn't have a whole lot of damage of thin hair like a lot of people I saw. My hair grew and grew and people would now guess that maybe I was Cambodian?? Egyptian?? half Black half Indian, Hispanic, some kind of mix.
Then came the questions....(my sisters have long hair too) one of my father's co-workers saw the three of us out in public and asked my father if we wear weave. Insulting to say the least, we grew our own hairs out of our own scalps!
I wrote a whole story lol but honestly, people can say what they want, taking care of my hair how I want has nothing to do with my racial make up, it has to do with how I take care of myself. I don't see anything wrong with thermal reconditioning your hair because, hair is hair, as long as you take care of it, it looks good to me.