Guest Post: Sherraine's BC Decision

Pic from Clutch Magazine :)

The original formspring question:

what kind of advice would you give someone who was deciding whether to big chop or not? (not transitioning, just thinking of cutting my hair)

Well, what are your reasons for and against? I'd say, BC if you want to, the decision is yours. Do not base it on what other people think, or how other people may perceive you. You'll be fly regardless.

Hello,

My name is Sherraine, and im that anonymous formspring-er who was wondering if she should big chop or not. And at that point when I asked the question I kinda was waffling, I sent this very long and incoherent email to Sunshine of naturally fabulous, kind of asking should I cut my hair (which I know is my decision but at that time I guess I just wanted someone to tell me to do it so that I WOULD actually do it lol.) 

But now I've realized WHY I want to cut it, and have decided that for myself that I should cut it. My reasons against cutting it were that I didn't think people (other people) would like it, and I didn't want to deal with the backlash. Basically I was worried OTHER people wouldn't like it (even though my twin sister has a twa and it looks good on her, so by definition it should look good on me lol). But my reasons for cutting it are in order to not create a new me, but to find the me that is hidden inside of me, that society has repressed. It's HARD being a teenager living in NYC (I'm a fellow brooklynite), and I guess I've let myself turn into a very quiet shy person, who is not the person I WANT to be. 

I've decided that in order to do this, I need to do a radical change to disassociate myself from this false identity I've taken on, and I need to learn to love myself and not just parts of myself. So I've decided to cut my hair among other lifestyle changes in an attempt to start from scratch, and find myself, and let myself not be hindered by society's rules, or how society views me. My reasons for wanting to cut my hair FAR outweigh the reasons I have against cutting it.

So yea. I just wanted to share that, you and Miss Fizzy and Sunshine have been my blogger inspirations, and to think, if I hadn't been helping a friend go natural, maybe I wouldn't have had this new self perception. This year has definitely been very thought provoking and transformative, so thank you for that as well :)

Sherraine

I asked Sherraine if we could use her message as a guest post, and she agreed, noting- 

I guess I see my story a little differently only in that I've always been natural. It's more of just a transition to a new mindset and outlook, I guess. She's planning on doing the BC in a couple of months, and I'm so glad that she's been able to find inspiration from the natural hair blog community. 

In some ways, I think there's much difficulty in big chopping when you're already natural (like our recent Curlicious Diva, Tricia, did). Perhaps because so many naturals aim to grow their hair out, it still provokes the reaction of "Why did you cut all that nice hair off?!" from some people. Also, a lot of people will tolerate natural hair if it's long because long hair is deemed as 'prettier', so it kinda cancels out the kinkiness, lol. It's important to remember that for a lot of people, the journey of being natural does not have a destination of long hair. 

Thanks, Sherraine!