Celebrating Natural African Hair

admin
4 Min Read

December 20, 2012 By Minda Magero

When I began to intentionally celebrate my Africanness, one of the things I did right away was to embrace my natural, kinky hair. It was great to go back to my roots–literally. I cut off my chemically treated hair and started growing my afro from scratch.

I grew up wearing my hair natural, and there was no shortage of hairdressers who could braid natural hair into numerous and varied styles for a reasonable price. When I left Kenya, I had tiny extension braids put in to give me a three-month buffer before I had to figure out how to take care of my hair in a foreign country. I ended up finding out that there were few hairdressers in Germany who could handle African hair, and those few were terribly expensive. In the end, I decided to be my own hairdresser. The first time I braided my own hair, it took me four hours and looked terribly sloppy. I didn’t have the patience to perfect my braiding skills, so after a while, I settled for the relative ease of using chemicals to straighten my hair.

Over the ensuing years, I alternated between perming my hair and getting it braided. When I got to the US and had access to reasonably priced African hairdressers, once again, I gravitated towards having my hair in braided most of the time. About that time, I ran into an old friend who was sporting a wonderful vintage afro. I had never worn anything like that. So I had my hairdresser cut off all of my chemically treated hair and started growing an afro.

It was a fun experience. Thankfully, my workplace didn’t discriminate against me for wearing my hair natural, but I can’t tell you how many of my African friends thought I had lost my mind. Granted, there were times I took the vintage afro look a bit too far, but I’m an artist and my job is to experiment with new things and push boundaries. I tried different hair lengths, a number of highlights and different afro looks, and then I got tired of all the work it took to maintain the hairstyle. I moved on to the next thing: dreadlocks.

I was fully aware that dreadlocks were associated with Bob Marley, reggae and rebel culture, and that I would probably be profiled because of them, but I was excited about the venture. It took a few tries and a couple of hairdressers before I finally found the look that works for me. I have worn dreadlocks for a total of almost 5 years now. After the first two years, I got tired of wearing dreadlocks, chopped them off and went back to my vintage afro because I missed it. After a year of my vintage afro, I went back to dreadlocks because I missed them. It finally dawned on me that I’m happiest when I can sport a different hairstyle every few months, like I did growing up. For now, I wear my dreadlocks until I find another natural hairstyle that I want to celebrate.

Leave your comment below…

Did you enjoy this article?

Have these posts delivered directly to your inbox

Never miss another post! Join 20,000 other smart readers and have content delivered on a weekly basis.

Share This Article