The hair on my head has been permed, bleached, mohawked, braided, fried, dip-dyed and weaved. A look at the so-called “Photos of You” on Facebook is misleading. I’ve had so many different looks you can’t tell it’s the same girl!
It’s not that I love switching up the game. The reality is I grew up despising my hair. While my sisters had fine hair that turned to springy curls when water was applied, mine required frequent “pressing” with the hot comb and regular visits to the salon for taming. When those roots grew back in, baby, there was nothing I could do about it! I hated that my hair was kinkier than my sister’s and I tried every style in the book in rejection of the texture I was given. In 2008, I started dating a young man I’d met in high school. He and I had mutual crushes on each other back then, but didn’t pursue anything until I returned home to Detroit after attending college in Florida. One thing was different about him from the start: he loathed my weave.
To be honest, I did too. It never came out the way the stylist said it would, never looked like the magazine picture I’d cut out or the girls I saw on the street. Before the month was over, I’d be ripping it out in frustration and surprisingly, my boyfriend would help me do that, too. He’d be right in the bathroom with the scissors, cutting out the tracks I couldn’t see and begging me to wear my real hair.
“Babe, I just hate that you spend hundreds of dollars on a hairdo just to take it out in two weeks,” he’d say.
“If my hair did what I wanted it to do, I wouldn’t have to do this,” I’d always yell back. My boyfriend explained that his hair wasn’t always curly either. But he took the time to find products that worked with his texture. He told me I could train my hair…
