Natural is as Naturals Do!

Hav­ing not had the good sense to doc­u­ment my ‘big chop’—who knew that such a brute and heavy-handed term existed for what amounted for me to be a sim­ple Caesar—via pho­tos or video, the dis­cov­ery of a vocal and diverse nat­ural com­mu­nity online after the fact has grounded me to the truth of the very per­sonal prac­tice that nat­ural is as nat­ural does.

Or for the pur­poses of this post—natural is as nat­u­rals do!

As in:

A hairDO that is my sig­na­ture style, my thing, my swag,

An I DO that is a com­mit­ment I have made to the unknown quan­tity spring­ing from my scalp with heady demands, and

A damned if I DO or I don’t, because you can’t make every­one happy with your choices, and yes that extends to those who find the time to hate within/without the nat­ural community.

The insur­gency is real, but so are those pock­ets of women (in par­tic­u­lar) every­where who cre­ate, main­tain, encour­age and embolden com­mu­nity among sistren and brethren by cel­e­brat­ing hair in all its many nat­ural for­ma­tions and school of thoughts.  Whether you are free flow­ing, brother– or sister-locked, dreaded, corn­rowed, twisted, fro-ed out, babies slicked around the edges or fuzzed-out—A to C (or as some have claimed Z)—I LOVE YA! Oh yes I DO!

This is a second-time-around nat­ural hair expe­ri­ence for me. The first was a frus­trated acci­dent of what­evs that resulted in my wrap­ping it up and let­ting it be.  It’s nat­ural I thought, hence and there­fore my active involve­ment beyond the greas­ing of scalp and the occa­sional plait-up was unnecessary.

How wrong I was.

It was 2000, YouTube was nei­ther dream nor fan­tasy, and it would be another 8 years before I dis­cov­ered how totally addic­tive and life-changing that par­tic­u­lar medium could be.  Even as I majored in Media Stud­ies and focused my atten­tion so keenly on Jour­nal­ism, blog­ging was in its infancy, and like me prob­a­bly had no clue of its own evo­lu­tion­ary possibilities.

This time around, my eyes were wide open.  This time around was 2 1/2 years ago around Thanks­giv­ing and there was a heady love from the outset.

It was a lit­tle after mid­night and I was recov­er­ing from a cold or some other mal­ady. It was not an awe­some occa­sion. My husband’s fam­ily was in town and I was in no shape to hang. I was on also on the cusp of 30. I was search­ing for some­thing; some­thing to mark my pass­ing into a per­sonal decade where I wanted to chal­lenge my own ideas about who I was and who I wanted to be.  I was in that head­space and just took one look in the mir­ror and made a deci­sion that has also served to alter the way I feel about myself on some very basic levels.

I didn’t imme­di­ately call myself nat­ural.  I had no vocab­u­lary.  I was sim­ply myself with noth­ing to hide behind, i.e. with­out the crown and glory that so many refer to.  And if that’s not enough to shake any woman up, my hus­band think­ing and ask­ing “why?” out loud did.

A redeem­ing moment dur­ing that time was an upcom­ing inter­view for my cur­rent job.  I had been wrap­ping my head again—this time really hid­ing behind my head­wraps, but I knew that had to stop.  So, I gave myself an encour­ag­ing nudge by let­ting my unde­fined teeny-weeny afro (TWA) hang out.  It was a good moment for me, and ulti­mately I got the job and was on my way in more ways than one.

And I’ve had to learn that there is no hand­book.  Fact is, the pre­vail­ing book titles out there, may or may not lay a foun­da­tion of knowl­edge that will give you what you desire in the way of hair love/lust.  Ulti­mately, if you don’t get in touch with your own head of hair, then you won’t have a head of hair.

Being nat­ural is some­thing that works for me cur­rently.  It does not have to be bro­ken down and under­stood.  I don’t have to excuse myself from the room (or forum as it were) if I decide to wig or wrap it up as is my pre­ferred pro­tec­tive style.  My hair just is, and it does what it will (and some­times what I tell it).

Although my nat­ural hair jour­ney began with such spon­tane­ity, it was not with the usual rebel­lion; and even when I look at my hair and think “Ughh, are you really going to chal­lenge me like this today/this week” I still wouldn’t have it any other way.

My stance:

There will always be those who don’t love your hair, and don’t have the good sense to keep their opin­ions to them­selves.  They may be fam­ily, friends, co-workers or whomever you please.

Then there will be those who sim­ply don’t under­stand, and will make gen­uine attempts to find that place where you’ll just have to make that deci­sion as to whether you’re ready and avail­able or even feel the need for a teach­able moment.

And let’s not for­get the ones who love the soap box of defin­ing what can and what can’t be nat­ural, and who down­right foam at the mouth when any men­tion is made of heat styling, sham­poo­ing, col­or­ing, weaves, wigs, exten­sions … etc, etc, etc …  Well, they have their own spe­cial place in my heart.

Grow­ing into your nat­ural hair and those daily per­sonal deci­sions you make about your hair is your DO.  Glam­our and oth­ers of that ilk DON’T have a say.

Your hair is not a democ­racy or for that mat­ter a tourist des­ti­na­tion.  You know where you live, love, work and breathe, so it is what­ever you deem necessary.

Life will surely change your hair and mind, and make its own demands, and before you can force your hair, it will force you—right down to the scalp it will—whether relaxed or nat­ural.

So go with the flow and BE ENCOURAGED in doing your DO.

Don­nie said it best in the clas­sic and must-listen Cloud 9 on his “The Col­ored Sec­tion” LP.

We live from the head down, and not the feet up/And I’m adorned with the crown that’s mak­ing this up/I’m fine, fine… under Cloud 9 …/Twist my cloud and it rains…and when it rains oh it pours…/Don’t let them tell you what to do/Defy gravity…

ABOUT THE WRITER

Hi there, I’m Tynisha Leon, writer, mango-lover, founder and Editor-in-Chief of DASHEEN mag­a­zine — the online des­ti­na­tion where Cul­ture. Feeds. Imag­i­na­tion! If you seek to inno­vate, pro­mote and/or con­tribute to posi­tioning a Caribbean peo­ple and gen­er­a­tion most pos­i­tively then link me! Bless!