Hair appreciation slow to take hold

Like those of many black women in America, my hair story is rooted in at least some degree of trauma.

When I was a girl, my natural hair was very thick and, to use the old derogatory term among black folk, nappy (kinky). I was what they call tender-headed; my scalp was sensitive, pain came easily. My mother used to reminisce about how the whole family -- I was the youngest in a blended family of eight siblings -- had to hold me down so that she could get a comb through my hair, after which she parted and braided it.

I went from neat "plaits" to rubber band-held pigtails and loose hairdos brought about with thermal hair straightening via metal hot-comb -- aka "pressing" -- with sessions spent stoveside in the kitchen of my first hairdresser, Mrs. Anderson. I had a healthy fear of that hot comb, and can still smell the burning hair mixed with the smell of that venerated Royal Crown Hair Dressing (hair grease). From Mrs. Anderson's kitchen in Rolla, Mo., I went to Mrs. Gold's little shop, located behind her house in central Little Rock's South End neighborhood.

The first damage to my hair came via the rubber bands; they broke my hair off. The edges of my hair went bald ... traction alopecia, suffered by black girls and women due to factors such as overly tight ponytails and braids. Then there was the self-inflicted damage from my attempts to straighten my own hair with an overheated comb. When thermal hair straightening segued into chemical straightening, I damaged my hair via use of home-perm kits. My permed hair fared better when I visited the salon on a regular basis and left the job to a professional. Either way, chemical relaxers burned like hell, leaving my scalp tender and itchy in the days after the treatment.

In the mid-1990s I was introduced to hair weaves -- thick, lush, store-bought, bone-straight Asian hair, Shade 1B, or off-black -- sewn onto my braided real hair. I wore weaves for several years before economics forced me to quit.

One of the biggest challenges of the black-hair-care experience has traditionally been the long wait at the salon. One day, post-weave, I walked into my stylist's salon for a permanent retouch and was greeted by a handful of his other customers, heads as yet untouched, in his waiting area. "I'll just reschedule," I told him before going to buy a home perm kit by which I proceeded to perpetrate the worst damage I'd ever done to my hair.

I cut the carnage hair down close to the scalp. Then I waited for the new hair to grow in, trimming the remaining perm-damaged ends gradually, rocked a short Afro and gloried in my long-lost natural hair, with its wonderfully woolly texture.

In late 2001, I once again put my hair into the hands of a professional who started my locs (the preferred term to "dreadlocks"), which were still fairly new to Little Rock at that time. I was blessed with a job that afforded employees the freedom to wear their hair as they chose. Nevertheless, the occasional observer felt entitled to offer unsolicited negative remarks about the short twists from which my locs originated, and I got a lot of side-eye when I went shopping at Walmart.

As the locs gained texture and length, "What were you thinking?" segued into "Oh, it looks so nice now that you've gotten past that awkward stage!" Then came the questions about how locs are formed -- and yes, the "May I touch your hair?" request. Call me easygoing, or call me an idiot -- I usually obliged. I, too, was trying to become educated about my hair; for me that education included learning from others' curiosity. As the years passed and the locs got longer, I began to encounter those who thought they were extensions ... including a billionaire hair-products co-founder who visited the state for a beauty-school appearance.

By 2012, my locs were approaching Rapunzel length. But I found myself facing a less-than-pleasant realization. Unbeknownst to me, my "loctitian" -- who passed away late that year -- had been twisting multiple locs together due to their thinning new growth. One day, after the combined locs had grown together for a while and forked, she snipped them to make them single again. I was upset after seeing how sparse my hair looked afterward; examining my scalp via double mirrors, I realized what was going on.

I'd always hated to see women wearing thin hair long, so I cut the locs into a short bob. Eventually I decided to allow the remaining locs to re-lengthen, leave the new growth untwisted to camouflage the thinness, and wear the loc'ed portion of my hair in a bun.

It's easy to say how I'd treat my hair if I could go back in time, knowing then what I know now. I suspect I would need societal and cultural expectations to make that trip with me.

Style on 07/10/2018