In her new piece for AYO, writer Holly Ajala provides an analytical look into her personal relationship with her natural hair and society’s insistence that she hate it.
Standing in front of the mirror, water drips from my soaked hair down my neck and shoulders.
Today, after two rounds of paraben and sulfate-free shampoo and a deep hydrating conditioner with manuka honey, my afro is luminous; greedy curls pull water into tight coils and droplets reflect the overhead light, twinkling like a million tiny stars.
What to do with this shock of hair today?
As innocuous as this question is, there is a unique tension – no choice I make is totally neutral. How Black women choose to style their hair directly impacts how we are treated, coloring various aspects of our lives from the types of potential suitors we attract, to the kinds of jobs we are considered for. The very tops of our heads somehow become the very centers of our perceived identities.
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The top of my head grows what that natural hair community has designated as “4C” hair – that is fine hair that grows in tight coils with several hair strands packed together. The curl pattern can range from a tight Z formation to completely unidentifiable. The name “4C” comes from the hair typing system of legendary celebrity hair stylist Andre Walker. With a client base that includes Oprah and Halle Berry, Walker’s ideology on hair has…saturated the natural hair conversation.
What might not be as well known is the problematic nature of the hair typing system itself, one which exposes the problematic nature of natural hair discourse more generally and that is rife with colorist implications.
While it’s not strictly fair to refer to Walker’s hair typing system as “a paper bag test for hair,” that it essentially what it has come to mean: it literally types Asian and European hair as Numbers 1 and 2, creating a functional hierarchy, where those of us down the line find that the most pervasive advice is about how to change our unruly hair into one of the more ruly types.
Despite his many claims to promoting the acceptance of all hair types, Walker once disparaged natural hair in a 2011 interview with Elle magazine. “Kinky hair can have limited styling options,” he said. ”That’s the only hair type that I suggest altering with professional relaxing.” Yikes.
As upsetting as that may read to many naturalistas with kinky hair, I admit that once the disbelief and rage had passed, I also felt a deep sense of relief. “At least he said the quiet part out loud,” I thought to myself.
There has been a fair amount of gaslighting in the natural hair community; where styles lauded as benign for everyone, are really about how to manipulate one’s hair into a looser curl pattern, basically how to turn undeniably- Black hair, into something more ambiguous, and “stylist friendly.”
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An education in Black hair
Due to its coarse texture—especially when it’s in need of moisture—there is the erroneous belief that 4C hair is structurally rougher, tougher, fundamentally stronger, and more resilient than the looser hair textures.
In reality, the opposite is true.
Two factors play dominant roles in determining the shape of an individual’s hair: the hair follicle, the portion of the hair that is underneath the scalp; and the hair shaft, the visible portions of hair that grow from one’s head. The rounder the follicle, the straighter the hair shaft growing out of it will be. The more oval the follicle, the more space exists for the hair to twist into curls, coils, and kinks.
However, each bend in the hair shaft represents a stress point, where the hair is more vulnerable to breakage. Additionally, natural hair oils called sebum have difficulty traveling down curly hair shafts, leaving curlier hair prone to dryness and breakability.
In essence, 4C hair is actually MORE vulnerable to breakage than looser hair textures. 4C hair is more delicate due to its tight curl pattern, not less.
This makes intuitive sense to me. Despite the stereotypes about 4C hair and the women who grow it, I feel innocent, cherub-like, and vulnerable in a divine way on the rare occasions I wear my hair in its purely natural state. It’s why 4C hair thrives the less manipulation it’s subjected to. Leaving her alone avoids aggravating the stress points and thus avoids creating unnecessary breakage.
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Back at the mirror, I’ve decided on Bantu knots. I’ll twist sections of my hair into tight plaits and then twist the plaits over themselves, creating a tight knot, then tuck the end of the plait underneath the knot itself. It’s a style named after the Bantu people of eastern and southern Africa and it’s a great protective style for 4C hair.
I have always been tenderheaded. I have countless traumatic memories of squirming and crying under the callous, heavy hands of aunties-turned-stylists-turned-torturers.
I had been told despite my obvious sensitivity that I had “hard” hair. That the pain was an unavoidable consequence of having ‘‘bad hair.” Lil Wayne didn’t shout out the toughness of Nigerian hair for nothing. This did not encourage many stylists to take pity on me or to ease up. Strangely, it seemed to inspire just the opposite.
If you trace a straight line from between my eyes to the very top of my scalp, you will find a small, round jagged scar that still hurts when I press too hard, or when the hair around it is pulled too tightly into a braid. I got this scar almost 18 years ago, when a stylist literally pushed a bobby pin into my scalp almost one full centimeter while attaching an extension piece. I was eight-years-old.
My screams and cries were chalked up to having tough Nigerian hair. It wasn’t until I complained about the flecks of blood I was finding on my pillow that the style was taken down and the injury discovered.
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The inaccurate and harmful beliefs cause more than the occasional headache—they map squarely onto colorist stereotypes of darker-skinned people as more masculine, more abrasive, and in need of less softness and less protection. The external anti-Black myth that Black people do not feel pain in the same way as white people has found its corollary in our intraracial affairs.
The impact of these stereotypes are felt way beyond the bathroom mirror, depressing the wages of darker-skinned people and increasing the average prison time given to darker-skinned defendants as compared to lighter-skinned ones.
For me, leaning into the mirror now, delicately parting waves of coils into even sections, the most devastating impact—alienation from my own hair and head—was also the most liberating.
Having to fundamentally relearn how to maintain and style my own hair has allowed me the opportunity to offer myself and my hair the patience and softness we had been denied.
It’s beyond self-care, it’s truly a spiritual practice. It’s taking your crown into your own hands.
Speaking of Nigerian hair (ahem, Wayne), for the Yoruba people of southwest Nigeria, the ori, or the head, is the most important spiritual element of a human being. It is one’s ori that determines one’s destiny on Earth and even represents the chief deity to which all requests must first pass through before reaching the Orishas or God themself.
The importance of one’s Ori is such that for many practitioners of Ifa, the daily praying to one’s own head is common practice. You can imagine then, the spiritual sacrilege of having people physically touching your ori as they declare you to be too tough to deal with and too rough to treat with softness. Essentially placing a curse on your head.
Taking back control of my ori then has meant speaking kindness, love, and unconditional acceptance over my own head as much as possible.
No, that doesn’t mean my natural hair is always the easiest or that we always get along, but I refuse to punish my hair for growing the way it does out of my head, and in turn, I refuse to punish myself for growing perfectly good hair.
There really are few better feelings than when you (or your stylist) finally get to the last braiding section, and this morning is no different. I smile lightly at my reflection, the close-cropped knots frame my head nicely—a true crown.
