Guest Post: When The Shoe's On The Other Foot...

This post was submitted by Curly Film Chick of the fabulous blog Diary of a Quirky Curly Film Chick. Go check her out!

I find it very interesting that ladies with relaxed hair feel attacked by those of us who choose to wear our hair natural. We are hurled with insults that insist we try to "convert" people to being natural and how we are "natural hair nazis." Because we advocate for natural hair, we suddenly look down on others who choose not to rock it. And they get really upset and say, it's just hair, why do you care how I wear it?

Well, someone like me has been wondering the same thing. I want to know why people are all up on me about why I won't relax it. I admit it, they almost got me thinking that it needed to be done, I almost had a memory of my first relaxer removing all those darn kinks from my strands, and quite possibly, I could be telling you a big chop story. But I didn't succumb to the creamy-crack. And that has not been easy. Because basically, people seem to be offended by the amount of hair that I have on my head. Don't ask me why it sends them spinning out of orbit when they realize that yes, my hair is all mine and no there would be no chemical. It really affected people in a big way for example:

Person: Damn girl, you got a lot of hair! It's that Indian* in you.
Me: Um, thank you?

Person: That's all yours right?

Me: Yes.

Person: You should get a perm to get your hair straight and nice!

I've gotten this talk all my life. That my hair is thick, it needed to be tamed, a relaxer would make it more manageable, a relaxer without lye will not damage my hair, just keep it straight so that it's done nicely, keep it in braids so that it's done (<---that seems to be the mentality of my family, who are mostly natural but hide their hair under wigs, extensions and weaves). Some of these comments came from family and friends who tried to be nice about it. I remember my friend saying to me, have you ever thought about getting a perm? You know just so that it's not so thick? as if that's a bad thing. Once I had taken my hair out of the box braids my mother put in and was styling it; she walked by and grew visibly annoyed and said: Could you at least put some mousse in it so that you can see the curls?! And a few years ago for my high school prom, a Guyanese guy (of Indian descent) asked me what I was going to do to my hair. I said I didn't know and he told me that I should get a perm, like a proper black girl.

And in fifth grade, when my hair was in a huge puff and some of the kids were digging it, a girl who I believe was Dominican informed me that my hair would never be pretty like hers because it wasn't straight. Damn, why did she feel the need to point that out to me? Come junior high school I was taunted, and I mean made fun of because my hair was different. The black girls surrounded me and demanded to know if my hair was real and if I had a relaxer. They insisted that my hair could not be real because I had so much of it. It wasn't until my mom had come to school one day and they actually asked her if my hair was real. My mom pulled on one of my braids and said yup, seems real to me. Everyone thought it was funny but I wanted to cry out of embarrassment. Stop obsessing over it, I wanted to say. I can prove to you that I am black (in ways that I will not get into, because that's a subject for another day!)

And believe you me I have loads of other examples, fairly recent that all came down to people being offended with my massive amount of hair. So from my side, I feel like naturals are the ones who get hounded at. We are constantly told to conform! conform! conform! Because we can't possibly be aesthetically beautiful the way we are. And now that we have the power of blogging (which btw saved me from the creamy-crack) relaxed ladies are feeling attacked?? We don't lose sleep over them not embracing their kinks (please correct me if I'm wrong, and a natural is crying over Jane not having curly hair). When we blog or make videos and such, we make it for those who are interested in leaving in the kinks (ha! no pun intended). I have personally never went up to a relaxed woman and said damn girl, can you grow your perm out please? And yet they have done this to me. Really, to each it's own. But my hair is just fine, gracias!

*Black-American venacular for meaning that you have Native American blood and I infact, do.

So what do you guys think? Have you had similar experiences? What has helped you stay off the creamy crack?