Tuesday, October 19, 2010

I LOVE MY HAIR!

One of my favorite writers/bloggers shared this on his facebook page. It brought to mind some of the comments I've heard lately about Will and Jada Smith's young daughter Willow, and her new song/video - Whip My Hair. A few folks aren't feeling Willow's hairdo, feeling it is clearly a hair don't. Mama Jada let her shave the side of her head and baby girl is rocking her tresses in her own way. I've got mad respect for a nine, about to be ten -year old who doesn't feel any need to conform to what everybody else thinks her hair should look like. It's her style and she rocks it with a level of confidence that some women three, four, even five times her age have never been able to master. On one recent interview both she and her mother commented that "it was just hair".

I've boo-hooed my fair share of bad hair experiences here before. Even now, I'm torn between what to do or not do with my hair. It has grown out again, just beginning to brush past my shoulders and now I'm bored with it.

I've done the weaves, the braids, the perms, au natural, and some styles that would scare the bejesus out of Madusa. Thinking back though, one of my all-time favorite hairdos happened the summer I was fifteen. My mother, in one of her off-beat moments, got creative with my hair. My shoulder-length strands were cornrowed up on the sides, banded down the center of my head with multi-colored rubber bands and the loose ends then curled back in a mohawk that outdid mohawks. I absolutely loved it!

At the family reunion there was no end to the comments that were made about my hair. The one that stuck most in my head came from an older relative, now deceased, who told me to take that mess out of my head. Apparently, it wasn't as refined or as socially acceptable as she thought it should be. Subsequently, when school started, my tresses were bone straight, pulled back into my requisite cute-girl ponytail.

To this very day I still fall back to that bone-straight, ponytail. It works, even when it doesn't work. So pondering my own hair don't, this Sesame Street video made me smile. This was definitely my feel good moment of the day!

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