Good Hair vs. Bad Hair

Good hair is defined by a myriad of definitions that seems to vary according to each person's experience. To me Good Hair is hair that is not breaking, shedding and has a healthy sheen. I've never been a texture snob. I've always liked relaxed and natural hair styles.

In my family I was always classified as having Good Hair. Not because it was silky straight, in fact, my hair was extremely course, thick and unmanageable as a child. What they often refer to is the fact that my hair has the ability to grow long. Ironically, I'm the only one in my family that will take a pair of scissors and chop of 4 or 5 inches and not bat an eye.

I have a cousin that has hair identical to me and she is 14. She unfortunately has been having major breakage and shedding due to over processing. When I told her mother I was going natural she said that she didn't think it was a good idea considering my ultra conservative job.

She has been wanting to go natural herself but fears ridicule from her job. I don't think people really give a crap about someone else's hair as long as it's not some crazy pink Mohawk or purple extensions. Most dress codes speaks on grooming habits and wearing hair in a natural color - ie. no blue/green etc.

I've never in my life seen a company dress code say that hair must be worn straight and longer than X number of inches.

I know hispanic women who's hair is coarser and kinkier than mine will ever be. No one's going out of their way to fire them. No one is hunting down hispanic or curly hair white women in the streets and shaming them into straightening their hair.

My reasons for going natural is to get my hair back healthy and hence get my "good hair" back.

Keep in mind that my hair will break a comb and cramp some fingers because of the texture of it. And that was when I was relaxing it. I can only imagine how difficult my hair is going to be to manage once it actually grows some length. I just cut my hair last month and I know It's going to be a long process ahead getting my hair back healthy.

Growing up "bad hair" were those little girls with super short hair that was all broke off from overprocessing, raggedy ends and their mothers' put so much grease in it that their whole face was shining from it.

We women need to understand that perming our daughters' hair that young is only going to make their hair unhealthy, brittle, dry, and unmanageable.

One of my baby cousins had beautiful hair. Hence the word HAD. Her hair was jet black, super thick and had the most beautiful wave pattern in it. It was healthy and growing and against her ebony skin it glowed. Then my aunt's hairdresser suggested putting a "texturizer" on it. At 4 years old. Now her hair is brittle, breaking off, not growing and her hair has lost it's gleam. It's also getting thinner and thinner. And for the first time in her life she has a "kitchen" Why does perming do that???

Of course, I'm the only one that seems to notice this because everyone is saying how cute her new hair is. I don't have a problem with relaxed hair. I've had my hair relaxed since I was 4 too and now that I'm going natural I can't turn my nose up at relaxed girls/women. All I'm saying is don't overprocess your hair! That is our biggest mistake.

Young hair should be natural. There is no reason to be relaxing a 4 year old's hair. In a world were everything is rush rush rush I know that many mothers want to be able to brush their daughter's hair in to a pony tail and run out the door but they deserve our patience and the little extra time it takes to keep their hair healthy.

I love seeing moms talk about the ORGANIC food they buy, and not letting their kids have food with preservatives and such and how they never let their kids eat this or that but I look down and she and her daughter both have relaxed hair. You don't think those chemicals affect you?

So that's my opinion on good hair bad hair.

Good hair = healthy

Bad hair = broke off hot mess

My Natural Hair Journey - The Big Chop

I love my new hair!!!!!

Well, let me go back and start from the beginning. Last July I decided that I wanted to color my hair a soft cinnamon like how Tyra Banks used to have her hair. My hair was just below the shoulders and relaxed. That weekend I went out to the local store and bought a home coloring kit (permanent dye). Which I applied incorrectly since I had never really colored my hair before and I applied it like you would a perm. I sectioned my hair into four sections and applied root to tip. Problem is that the four sections ended up being 4 different colors because of the application time. (My hair is super super thick) SO needless to say I didn't know what the hell I was doing and had no business coloring my own hair. But I was like "how hard can it be?" Well apparently it was really hard! SO I got the dumb butt award that day.

Well I can't go to work with parts of my hair blonde, orange, apple red, and brown. I looked a HOT MESS!!!!

SO I went to Sally's and asked the lady what to do. This genius said to put a toner and a darker red rinse on my hair to even out the color.

BIG MISTAKE.

Now all of my hair was orange and blonde (but not a good blonde a ghetto mess color blonde)

SO I went to my cousin who does hair on the side but never went to school for it and she told me to buy this Chinese black-brown natural hair rinse and just cover it all up and stop trying to fix the unfixable.

That was the next step...

Keep in mind this all happened over one weekend.

That was my next mistake!!! I should have just thrown a wig on it and called it a day and let my hair recondition before continuing to process it. (I must have been off my game that weekend because duh! I know that)

So the following week my hair was falling out in clumps... I wonder why???

I trimmed and trimmed and trimmed and trimmed but nothing worked.

My hair was dry, brittle and completely unmanageable. Needless to say when I did relax it again the relaxers didn't take. You can't relax damaged hair and expect good results.

So now almost a year later my hair has still not recovered. It won't take a relaxer My hair was literally in shock. My new growth was damaged because my hair was splitting up the shaft. I was having to flat iron and use a curling iron at the highest heat setting and it was just making matters worse. I started wearing weaves to let it just calm down and stop freaking out.

3 months ago I stopped relaxing it. And just wore weaves. (glued in)

Through the help of many YouTube friends I have decided to just go natural.

When i took my hair down and washed and conditioned it 2 weeks ago I noticed my new growth actually had shine and looked healthy. So I decided to cut off the relaxed part and just start over. I knew that there was no sense in trying to transition because my relaxed hair was really really damaged. My hair was only like 6 inches long on top anyway. So my big chop wasn't that tramatizing.

What I have found very strange is that my hair texture has become extremely curly.

I've been getting my hair relaxed since I was 4 so I've never seen my own hair texture. So now I have a TWA. And I'm so happy with how soft, and manageable my hair is. Many of the YouTube videos have shown me how to care for my hair and even though this is only my first week I think that I have the advantage of starting out on a good foot with a lot of great advice.

I haven't bought any natural products yet I'm still using the products I already had. I'm just using less of them. I've also been able to stop using grease in my hair. This is really strange to me because grease was my relaxed hair's best friend. But it just sits on top of my natural hair. I'm using the co-wash method because my hair loves water and it's not too happy with shampoo. My conditioner doesn't have any silicones in it or protein so it's just making my hair softer and softer. I'm co-washing my hair every other day. In between I'm just rewetting it and putting in a creamy leave-in lotion by organics that's meant for children's hair.

I also use a very very tiny bit of gel and my hair is soft and curly and not frizzy at all! My relaxed hair was always a ball of frizz with even the slightest bit of moisture.

This week I've had a few negative comments about me going natural and how natural hair isn't professional but I just shake that off. If a company fires me over my hair, I'll be living in a mansion by the end of the year so it's a win win. ha ha.

I don't think my boss gives two craps about my hair as long as my work is done. That's the beauty of a man boss. He probably hasn't even noticed that I cut it.

So that's my story of why I'm going natural. Contrary to popular belief I'm not a political activist, I'm not a vegatarian tree hugger, I'm not Jamaican (someone asked me that today, idiot!) I just want healthy hair. I'm sick of waking up and having hair all over my pillow.

Originally I was just going to let it stay natural to let it rest and then go back to relaxing it after I got a little bit of length. But after seeing the other women on youtube I don't think I'm going to go back to relaxed hair. All of my person misconceptions about what natural hair looks like has been changed. I didn't even know that my hair was curly!!! I was always told that I had unruly, unmanageable, dry, thick hair and the only way to tame it was to chemically process it to death.

Shame on my grandma for relaxing my hair in the first place!!!