Been A Long Time...Should Have Never Left You Without a Dope Rhyme...

Yep, I have been meaning to write something, anything on this blog for a couple of weeks. In fact, I had every intention of posting pictures and stuff while I was in Arlington, VA during the week of February 3 - 7, 2008. For some reason, I did everything but blog, maybe not everything. I rested. I was tired and although I walked a mile each day while in Arlington, I took naps and just enjoyed my time there without worries or deadlines. Such is life...

A lot has happened since I last posted and I also got tagged. So I gotta do that too, and I will sooner rather than later.

Well, my 4 year old niece decided she wanted a Mohawk (faux-hawk) and decided to surprise her mother with the new hair do when she got home.



Yep, she took sissors to the sides of her hair and cut off the hair on the sides of her hair, creating a delightful mohawk. Now at first I was in disbelief, then it was funny as all out. My sister was so beside herself she found my uncontrollable laughing as just too much. For my sister, it wasn't funny, at all. When my sister asked my niece why? She said with a smirk, "It was too long." LOL! Needless to say that didn't help her situation. And when the funk settled down some, I had to remind my sister that my niece, who I call Hunny Bunny, marches to a the beat of her own drum. She is not going to be her girly, girl. She is going to be an individual and not be a follower. She is going to be a leader and there is nothing she can do to change the specialness of this child. She is different, she is smart, she is intelligent, she is beautiful but she is stubborn and strong-willed. Accept it and move on. Of course my sister wasn't enamoured with my statement that we are not our hair. On her myspace page she promptly tells me that I am wrong. LOL! But we are not our hair. We are the sum total of our being inside and outside and our hair is not who we are!

I was reading one of my favorite blogs and was reading an entry about when black women don't wear their natural hair it is a form of self-hate. Self-hate is a strong word. Just because a person wears a perm doesn't mean they are not in touch with their African roots or they hate their African roots. What I do know is we as African-American women do not know how to style our naturally curly hair. We were taught when it became too unmanageable a perm would fix that and then we would have the versatility we wanted. I think if we had been taught how to work with our own natural hair, there would be vesatility.

I am not on the streets preaching to every permed black female saying you need to get rid of the perm sista and come on over to the natural side. However, if they ask my opinion I will give it. I wore a perm steadily from the 10th grade until 2004. Prior to that it was straightening and perms off and on depending on whether my mother could keep up the maintenance. I enjoyed my straight hair. I loved when it was long and I loved when it was Halle Berry short. I loved when it was colored and I loved that I could rock the latest hair styles and the attentioned my hair garnered me. When I entered law school, I knew working two jobs and law school would leave no time for me to sit in a beauty shop for 6 to 8 hours to get my hair done. I was busy and that was too much of my time wasted. So I went to braids which took 4 hours to install, 2 hours to remove and could be done every 4 months. I loved it, but I was tired of the micros and when my braider died, I went to the stylish Kinky Twists. Well, with no perm and the tighteness it took to install them, I had damage. More damaged than I had with wearing a perm with the microbraids. So my quests for alternatives was on. I don't miss my perm. Will I ever go back to one, most likley not, but who knows. When folks ask me about perms I say forget about it, look for an all natural stylist. Do I judge my friends or others because they wear a perm, hell no. To each its own. My journey ain't yours! However, don't think if you ask me I am going to agree with the use of chemicals to alter your hair texture. I'm not, but I don't judge you because of it. You wear your hair the way you want to and I don't think of you less or think you any less black than me because I wear my hair in a natural style.

I have more to blog about and of course I need to do the tag, post more pictures and just blog.