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What went wrong in the mind of my role model?
Yesterday I spoke with my mother and she told me she had to cut all her hair
off again because it started falling out. Now you must keep in mind she had
just spent seven months in braids trying to grow out her natural hair. After
the seven month period she let the braids down and she had a remarkable 8
inches of beautifully long, natural hair, with silvery streaks through it.
She is fifty-one, so her silver is starting to show more and more. But as
with most people afraid of aging, regardless how graceful the aging, she just
doesn't want to accept it, so of course the first thing she does is dye is red.
She rocks her fro for about three days with the red color and then something in
her psyche kicks in and she can "no longer manage it", so she has to perm it.
One week later it starts falling out and her seven months of redevelopment are
all shot to hell in 11 days. But she had "three great hair days", as she recounted it.
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Now my question is why in the world does she think that perming her hair makes it
more manageable when it won't even stay in after she perms it? Now this is not the
first time she has gone through this experience. This may be about the 31st time,
seeing that she has gone through this every year since I was alive, at least. This
to me, and I am sorry mother, is like the raccoon reaching in the hole for the shiny
aluminum that is not worth anything, but not letting go so much that he is willing
to chew off his own arm in spite of letting go of this ridiculous piece of aluminum.
From what I have learned recently, most black women with perms go through this same
process yearly. They say it is worth the sacrifice. But the question here is what is
worth the sacrifice? I am trying to understand why would anyone sacrifice there hair?
What is she sacrificing it for? I hope it is not for a black man. I say that because if
a black man won't accept her in her natural state, that means he can't accept himself in a
natural state, and if that is the case why would you want him anyway? He can't be worth
much to your children, he doesn't even know how to value himself, how can he value her?
Could she be sacrificing for her job? White people don't even respect black women with
perms, they tell me this all the time when they pull me to the side and tell me how wonderful
it is to see someone who respects themselves enough let there real hair grow. And white people
do this every where I go, from the basketball court, to martial arts class, to my federally
employed job. Every time my wife, with a head full of locks, goes on one of her catering events,
she is always the center of attention, with white women clamoring around her trying to find out
more about her, where she came from, what she is all about, how she gets her hair to be so
beautiful, etc. Her perm headed colleagues get no such attention which results in my wife
getting more catering gigs and the perm heads talking about the nappy head black chick brown
nosing whitie. But she is being herself, she didn't try to get her hair to be straight like
whitie, nor blond like whitie, so who is really the brown noser, and why don't black people
accept that they have nappy hair, nothing is wrong with naps, that goes for the fellows too.
Though I must admit with the rise of the more recent stars (Method man, Ludicrous, 50, etc.)
we are seeing braids and fros come back. This could be a big boost in our self esteem, if it
weren't just a fad.
In short I think real people value real people. Real people rarely value
superficial qualities, mostly because superficial is surface, and you really
can't trust anyone who present a false surface, because you have to immediately
realize how screwed up there foundation is.
The questions and information presented here is open for discussion. Please provide
responses to info@tallahasseeblackpages.com attention Don Surr. Thank you all and welcome
to the future.
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