Originally Posted by
Beesweet
I don't know how to do a quote -- but I agree about the hair teasing and torture -- the kids at school are always bringing up hair.
My daughters are not really bully-able, and they are instructed to defend a bully victim -- and they come home with a whole range of insults of "things she said, and then she said, and then she did this....." They make Don Imus sound like Mister Rogers. It's rarely white vs. black either, or hispanic vs. white, or hispanic vs. black. I guess people tease their own hair types....
I know girls have tried to tease my baby about her afro puffs (that look awesome by the way!) but she not easy to tease, so it doesn't go far.
I have read a lot of books on black hair, the media, societal stuff, and it makes me very sad.
The only "bad" black hair I see is the fried, dyed and lied to stuff -- hairlines halfway back on the head from chemicals since age 5. Little girls with baby relaxers.
The most beautiful thing I have ever seen is when my girls are freshly washed, combed through, and oiled, before I style. I made them walk around like that for a while. I told them I needed a break to cook or something, but really, I just want to see them walk around. They have halos of sheer beauty. Now only my one girl has it. The other is fried and lyed, but she's happy for now. I'm sure it will swing the other way sometime.
I want to burn magazines, shoot my tv, and bomb Hollywood and the NY fashion world.
It's a bad message the world gets about black hair. STILL. It is not black hair that needs to be beaten into submission to be "good." It's mostly everyone else creating the media.
White women torture themselves about hair, too, but not in the same way -- there's an element of hair not being good enough which translates into "us not being good enough" -- so we seek to color, trim, chop, curl, straighten -- and we do it emotionally -- but there is not this hair hatred that I see.
I know when I have had terrible emotional upsets I have taken it out on my hair in rash ways -- drastic cuts, bad drugstore color. In moments of extreme despair, I've fantasized about cutting all my hair off -- kind of a keening and wailing thing, but it makes me wonder constantly about the emotional connections all of us women have with our hair.
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I love this board, and it's nice to see some fellow 4a/4b sistas here, as well. 
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