Mane Attraction: That Spring-Summer Feeling

I reside in Orlando, Florida, a metro-city that doesn’t really boast sea­sons (as in marked, pro­longed weather shifts), but I can still appre­ci­ate the men­tal bliss that comes when I think of that Spring-Summer feel­ing via my hair.

It’s like mother nature giv­ing per­mit to come out and play and there’s a fresh­ness in the air and a feel­ing and obvi­ous real­iza­tion of new life that is hard to ignore.  This feel­ing is fur­ther epit­o­mized by those “la, la, la…” notes made famous by Min­nie Riperton’s Lov­ing You or epony­mously to this post on Jill Scott’s Spring Sum­mer Feel­ing. It really just comes down to a feel­ing, and if you’re going to go there, you have to pay atten­tion and just flow with it.

Lately, I’ve been hav­ing all these Spring-Summer feel­ings about my hair.  My hair has come a long way, from my relaxed and slicked into a low pony tail days to it’s head­wrap hey­day, to my love affair with flat twists-out, then the famous afro curl style (I miss that one!) to kinkies to wanton-wigness  to my recent vic­tory rolls.

I’m really just want to let it all hang out and that being said I have zero hang ups about hair exten­sions, as in braids and wigs. Call it what you like, pro­tec­tive styles, trea­son… but when I wake up and I’m con­tem­plat­ing my hair, my ques­tion to myself in the mir­ror is aways: What do we feel like today?

The fol­low­ing is the con­sis­tent drum­beat of inspi­ra­tion for what I am feel­ing for my Spring-Summer hair:

Leela James and that EPIC blowout! You walk into a room with this hair and the vol­ume is turned way up. You are def­i­nitely bounc­ing to your own sound­track. I can almost hear Leela singing… “Don’t Speak” here. I love the way she moved through that song! So Soulful!

This next do, I have been flirt­ing with for ages–circa 2001. A lit­tle back­story: My first trip to a quote unquote nat­ural hair salon was to Afrigenix. Founded and branded by Francine Toukou, it was the place where I felt most at ease in the knowl­edge that rock­ing a nat­ural was the fly­est thing since dis­cov­er­ing my New York strut. This is one of Francine patented do’s called the Havana Twists.  These do for me what the Janet’s Poetic Jus­tice locks seem to be doing for a new gen­er­a­tion. The Kinky twist look has long been a favorite of mine, so I already know the look will work on this round face. Another rea­son I flowed with this as my sec­ond look is this vision I have of a blowout that can tran­si­tion into Francine’s twists.

The final do is all about a cel­e­bra­tion of COLOR & CUT . Truth be told, I tend to pre­fer higher heights when rock­ing out my nat­ural than length. It’s been harder to achieve with hair growth, but some­thing about my hair just stand­ing up every which way or in some molded shape makes me feel light and lifted and sassy in a way that no length via exten­sions or wig has ever let me.

What I love about this sistah’s DO: EVERYTHING! From the grad­u­a­tion into fro­l­i­cious, lus­cious curli­ness to that intense color com­bi­na­tion that I wanna call sun­set.  It’s so how I am feel­ing right now. Color has not been my friend in the past. After two self-applied box col­ors, which led to a 2nd big chop, I know that color for me is a del­i­cate undertaking.

Aside from that dilemma, what’s great about this look is that you don’t even have to get the back cut to achieve it.  The back can be flat-twisted or braided into a sin­glestrand twistout, or a bantu knot-out at top. You can even do some tight vic­tory rolls or bantu knots in back. The options are all nice.

I’m headed to the Cal­abash Fes­ti­val at Trea­sure Beach, Jamaica in about a week and would love a new do-debut for the trip. In the inter­est of that and this great time of year not leav­ing me behind in the dol­drums, I mean to make a deci­sion soon.

One of the best things about our hair is the options–whether nat­ural and otherwise–to go take it wher­ever we want to go. With Spring well on its way and Sum­mer just around the cor­ner, I say let’s get it!

What Spring-Summer hair have you been flirt­ing with and what are you cur­rently rocking?

ABOUT THE WRITER

Hi there, I’m Tynisha C. Leon, writer, West Indian, mango-lover, founder and Editor-in-chief of DASHEEN mag­a­zine — the online des­ti­na­tion where cul­ture feeds imag­i­na­tion. Join the cul­ture chat on Face­book and Twit­ter! If you’d like to con­tribute, drop me a line here, I’d love to read/see your unique views! Bless up!