Surveys And Natural Kinks

I think there was something wrong with my lecturer the other day. It seemed like he didn't feel like teaching. Why else would he speak in a dwindling monotone and expect us to listen and write notes? After an hour of suffering i.e straining to listen to my lecturer and write notes, I sort of gave up. I put the lecturer's voice at the back of my mind and started doing what I'd like to call a mini-survey.

I decided to look at people's hair, specifically girls. I wanted to get ideas on what not to do on my hair, me being an anti-mainstream junky. After lots of research and putting together the numbers, I found that  most, if not all, girls in the class had;

a) extremely straight hair, whether natural or relaxed

b) weaves that were extremely straights and uncharacteristically long

c) plaited braids that were extremely straight or close to straight

I also found out that I was part of the statistic. I fall under category a). What I didn't see was a bush of some serious African hair or a girl with short natural hair. This made me a bit sad. Here is a group of students at the university, where diversity is embraced, and we all had pretty much the same thing: straight hair!

Weren't we proud of our God-given natural kinks? Yes, they are hard to maintain. Yes, it is painful to comb what feels like a steel wool clone. Yes, it breaks easily. But why sew hair that looks like Barbie's on your head when you could learn to take care of  and maintain the most versatile type of hair?

I think I'm venting without making a point. What I'm trying to say is that we need to be proud of our natural tresses. We've fed our minds to believe that straight hair like the white folks is the best. What a bunch of hogwash! I'm sure God didn't make a mistake when He made Africans have some seriously kinky hair. And I know that there's a whole natural hair movement going on now in Nairobi but it skipped my school. So I think it's time we embraced our natural hair- it's beautiful, a heck of a lot of work and expensive but worth it.

I miss my natural hair. I might shave off the perm this year.