Hai darlings ! Can you be so tired that you die of it? I think that's what happening to me, feel like the walking dead forreal! But I need to feed my baby blog, so while I prepare my post on what I just saw at the H&M showroom ( trust me its gorgeous !) I'm going to tell you about something that has been on my mind for a while now
I've officially decided to go natural and start my Hair Journey !
You probably have no idea what that's supposed to mean so let me start at the beginning okay ?
As I showed you in an earlier post I cut my hair pixie-short in January of this year. At the time I did it because I wanted to do something different with my hair, after years and years of lenght-obssesing. I liked it more than I thaught, even though it was a major adjustment! I was so sick of the weaves, plus I never ever EVER dared to do something crazy with my hair, so I just decided to chop the whole shabang off. Not even realizing what I was getting myself into, but I figured that I would discover that as I progressed.
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Cutting my hair that short forced me to take extreme care of it, because you simple can't make a quick bun on a bad hairday. I did some research on how to take proper care of my afro hair and omg, a whole new world opened for me. I learned about the natural hair movement that is totally the ish overseas,which got me thinking a LOT.
The thing with African, Afro-American and Mixed women is that we relax our hair A LOT. Relaxing is making your naturally curly hair straight, using chemicals that are quite dangerous. Talk about suffering for "beauty" ! This tradition goes wayyyy back, the first relaxer was invented in 1877 !! It basically uncurls your hair for let's say 8 weeks.
^relaxed hair vs natural hair
But relaxing your hair is not without risk ! Exessive use can not only burn your skin, but it can cause your hair to just fall the f*** out of your head !! You must be wondering WHY on earth people do that in the first place. Well, it's a LONG story. Like I need to explain apartheid and everything. It all comes down to the pressure to fit in, and look like caucasian (= white) people.
Anyways you've probably figured out by now that it's NOT good for your hair OR your scalp to relax it.
Since a few years, black people started to realize that you don't need to "fit in" to be defined as beautiful, so they started to embrace their natural hair. To get off the relaxer or "creamy crack" is absolutely not something you do overnight ! Like actual drugs, you need time to get used to it, to take special care of yourself and your lifestyle to be successful with the rehab !
Enough talking about others, let's go back to MOI.
I'm not gonna lie to you, I'm a white girl to the bone. Bounty. Oreo. Doesn't really matter what you call it.
I just wasn't raised in the black community, but among the Dutch. Many of you know that I lived in The Netherlands for almost 8 years, in one of the most "villagy" cities EVER and I just didn't know any better. I started relaxing my hair at a very early age ( I think I was about 8 ) simply because I wanted straight hair, like all my Dutch friends. Soon the weaves followed, but mostly because I wanted to experiment with my looks rather than really trying to fit in.
Anyways when I started to do my own hair, I noticed that I liked it big, fluffy, curly! I started to wonder why on earth I relaxed my hair only to style it like how it would look without that stuff in my hair ! Fast forward to this year : I decided I needed to embrace my natural hair, behcuz I loves it.
It's pretty scary though, I have no idea what I'm getting myself into! But I feel like it's totally worth it. I want to show of my 'fro in a few months, be proud of me and my NATURAL hair. For the moment I've got braids, but I'm soon taking them off so I can trim my relaxed ends and fully dive into this adventure. So SO exited ! I know it won't be easy at all, but there are more than enough natural sista's out there to help me stay motivated and stick to the end.
Hereby I pledge to go natural, to embrace my hair the way it was made to be on my head and to always promote natural beauty on my blog. I'll try to post updates as much as possible, if only it were to motivate others to go natural too =D
Tracee Ellis Ross is my natural hair inspiration, my goal this year is to grow a similar or even more gorgeous 'fro !
To stay commited, I joined the 2014 Natural Hair challenge. You can click on the banner on your left to find out more.
Wish me luck babes!
Bisous