Hair

I have just had relaxer put in my hair, after a nearly 7 year hiatus.

Some inexplicable force inside me beckoned me to do it, because I haven't had a haircut since February, and the thought of another shave-athon seemed banal.

When I was younger, I used to hate my hair. It was never kinky enough to support anything even remotely resembling an afro or proper fade. It also isn't straight enough for me to style it that way. Barring her militant period, my mother always relaxed her hair. Conversely, my father kept his hair close-cut. I just experimented all the time.

In high school, I started out with a high top that was more like a medium top and ended with relaxed hair down to my neck.

In college, the humidity of the Home Counties put a quick kibosh to the relaxing, since I looked like a deranged militant. Not exactly the best image to show to the world, especially when one is a hardcore leftist. So I started getting it cut close again.

When I returned to the US, I resumed the relaxing. I thought it looked decent, until I realised that in order to keep it under control at night, I had to wear a nightcap. It was at that point that I just decided to screw it all and just get it all cut off.

The funny thing through all this is that so often others tried to imprint their beliefs of "black coolness" onto my hair, as if my follicles and what I did with them were public domain.

"You should get dreadlocks!"

"Wear a 'fro, man."

"Dude, cornrows."

Apart from telling me that I really hung with too many people who liked to ape surfer-speak, I had to wonder why they felt the need to box me into their definition of what a black man should like.

Some guys can wear locs (I will never call them "dreads" anymore, courtesy of a friend schooling me via her play) and come out stunning. I'm not one of them. I don't have the wherewithal to maintain them properly. You see, they are meant to be striking and awe-inspiring and most importantly, they are to be treated right. I also suspect that my hair could never get tight enough to support them.

The same applies to cornrows. I don't know about you, but I can't fathom spending several hours to nearly a day while someone works on my hair. What do you talk about? What do you do when you need to use the bog? And how do you get rid of the guilt of taking up that much of someone's time?

Then there's the proverbial afro. It seems that too many people have seen too many blaxplotation films and think that the afro is a sign of being badass. No, it's not. It is a sign of one's link to Africa. It is a political statement without uttering a word. It is a statement of solidarity with one's ancestors. It also wasn't always called "an afro," in fact many people called it "natural," because it was the natural state of their hair and a sign that they were reclaiming their own beauty.

Unfortunately for me and virtually every member of my family, that isn't quite the natural state of our hair. We can grow it only so far before it collapses on itself, rendering us into sepia versions of Leopold Stokowski.

So what's left? Relax or cut. It feels very limiting, to be honest. There are times when I'd like to feel what it's like to have your hair blowing in the wind as opposed to just the scalp. Yet, at the same time, I ultimately don't mind that I will never experience it. It's my claim that I'm making to my own beauty and no one else's.