From funky beehive to red and rotten...

by Nicole
(Minneapolis)

As a young child, I had long hair that my mother painstakingly would wash, set, and if needed press at least once a week. I looked great, but the process was horrific. I dreaded it because I hated water in my face, so mom would pull out the ironing board, have me lay on it to wash. Then she'd condition, section off my hair, set it on rollers and sit me under a hood dryer for 4 hours or so. My hair was really thick and took forever! For a little kid, it was hell...pure hell...and hot as hell too.

I eventually started having tantrums because, though the results were picture perfect, I as miserable and my mom was getting meaner and less patient. One day she marched me to a salon, had it cut off and gave me a Jerry Curl. Thus began my descent into the deepest pits of hell yet.

Keeping the perms and cuts up were too costly over time. So finally, mom just let it grow out. When my hair finally reached that weird in-between stage, and the perm had grown out, I didn't know what to do. Mom stopped doing my hair and left me to own devices. She knew nothing about braiding, extensions, etc. and refused to press my hair because I was afraid of the pressing comb. She always managed to leave cockroach sized burns on my head and neck. So, I started styling my hair into an afro version of the beehive.

I was traumatized at school. During class films, kids would yell at me to move because they couldn't see around my "big heeeed". I'd find candy, gum, spit, peanut shells, whatever in my hair all the time. I was Kid from Kid and play before it was hip. If I did manage to straighten my hair with a hand-held dryer, people would call me "Cocka-too" or "Patty LaBelle" because my hair was so long I needed Dipity Doo to hold it in place. I spiked it (it was the 80's) so spikes were kinda in...just not long ones like mine...unless you were into that Neo-Nazi punk/slam dance thing. I don't think too many of them would be interested in seeing a sister at one of their gatherings...but that's another story.

Then, by 7th grade, my school had swimming. I didn't know how, and most of the sistas at my school were in the same boat. We cowered at the shallow end of the pool, until our mean gym teacher told us we had to learn to swim. We "learned" to swim 5 days a week for 6 months. By the time the ordeal was over, half of us were bald. All of us were "orange".

By the time the class ended for the year, most of us had shorter hair than when we started. And still, none of us knew how to swim! Most of us had relaxers and the chlorine in the pool did us in after the first week.

The gym teacher left us only 15 minutes each day to shower and dress. For those of us with "textured" hair, that meant we either went natural...and not in a good way...or we frantically tried to blow dry and press our hair straight and were 20 or minutes late to our next class and lookin reeeal baadd.

I was one of the girls whose hair not only turned orange, but started falling out, even though I just went natural and pulled it back in a big pony-tail...er I mean...afro-puff. Over time, I lost so much hair, my puff shriveled down to two burnt off nubs of "fro" at the rubber band on either side of my head.

By the end of the school year, I still had two burnt off nubs on the sides of my head, but I also donned a big shiny bald spot on the back of my head too, tension bumps, eczema from the chlorine water, and I permanently smelled like chlorine, no matter how many showers I took. The only good thing about the whole ordeal was I didn't have to be teased about the bee-hive anymore! I just got called "ugly" regularly by the boys after school. It took me four years to grow out the damaged hair into a chin length bob. It took me another 5 years to get my hair back to the length it was when my mom cut it off as a kid.

I had many hideous hair cuts at salons and more at the hands of both evil and incompetent hairdressers. After I got married and was pregnant with my first, I found out a grade school friend was working as a stylist at a new salon. I went to him two times, and found out he only knew how to do one hair-style. I hated it. It was the shag, and I looked like the black Mrs. Brady from the Brady Bunch.

The last time I went to him, his air conditioning was out, and he used every heat appliance he could find to straighten my hair. It was a 100 degree day, and almost 100 percent humidity, so with my very thick and by this time long hair it was a lot of work. Unfortunately, the heat and pregnancy nausea were more than I could stand. I puked up all over him, myself and the very hairy salon floor. Customers were screaming, other hairdressers were cussin' and he was so hysterical, he didn't finish the job. Instead he walked me to the door, and told me not to come back. In a daze I drove myself home coated in vomit, with a really ugly haircut. I did recover, but I never got my hair cut again. That was 8 years ago. I've done my own hair successfully every since. I look and feel better too. UGH. The trials of curls like ours!