Eh I am not so sure….

I watched the below video today and I totally get what miss Brittany was saying, as a woman who has changed her hair a thousand times the value she places in it is immaterial I guess or so she thinks… watch:

I think the opposite, in my opinion when you change your hair often and do a bunch of things to it, like color, cut, straighten, wear it in an afro or go bald ..then hair IS in fact important to you and you are not separating it from your over all self image. Really it is not JUST HAIR as you would have everyone believe it is that part of you that you can easily manipulate to satisfy the need of ‘changing things up’ or cure that boredom spell or rut you might be in.  Saying ‘its just hair’ is just another way to justify your decisions on how you wear your hair in hope that the negative energy goes away… the thing is.. you don’t have to do that.

(If I was bald, then not having hair would mean something to me because then in that case I probably wouldn’t be bald …..its the same thing just flipped the other way)

Another perspective is…. even though it appears that some people are over the top with the ‘I am natural hear me roar’ thing for some it is really that huge. For example I posted a video last week of a Jamaican girl playing with her doll Rapunzel and in the clip she was telling her doll that she made sure she married a dude with ‘pretty hair’ but despite that the doll came out with hair ‘like hers’.  She berated the doll calling her ‘wicked’ and that she didn’t feel like getting blisters from caring for the dolls hair. She also went further to say that it was ok, because she planned to take her to the hairdresser to have her hair relaxed and a weave put in so she can look like the other girls in the school she was planning to send her to (all the girls at the school were light skinned and had long soft hair, she planned to buy a bottle of bleach too for the dolls skin). This video though considered a joke is so real for a woman like me growing up on an island where ‘kiyah’  or  bad hair was seen as ugly, unacceptable, to be covered and low class…… that’s just real talk.

Was it a problem to me then, no! because that’s what I knew as a young girl. As I matured and knew better I knew how wrong and destructive these cultural facets were to the girls who are subject to it and to the girls being raised as if they are better than another because of their hair and the color of their skin. With that said it can be liberating when you can finally come to terms with your entire image and see your self as beautiful as Brittany stated towards the end.

again it is not ‘just hair’

Hair is – Cultural, apart of our identity and big business

Here’s the thing…. I agree that negativity is often transferred because people are often fickle that way. Its the same not only with hair but in business, in the work place and sometimes in our own families. The source of the problem for Brittany is that some chicks feel they have a God given right to tell you what to do with your own head, and unfortunately that is one of the drawbacks of putting yourself out there on YouTube and other aspects of social media. The response for her and for us all should not be ‘its just hair’ because it means something different for everyone, the answer should be… Its MY hair.

Em