Hair

Tuesday, August 17, 2010 - Comments 3

By Oluwatomisin (“Tomi”) Oredein

I’ve always hated what God threw on my head.  It was too coarse, not long enough, nappy… which of course implied that I was less than my classmates, whose hair reflected that somewhere inside their history, their moms and daughters had the genes of goddesses.  See, they can control the living beings on their head; and in their control their hair became adornment, not a curse, like the one my head wore.

I guess it started when I was six and my older sister was eight.  I have the best older sister in the world by the way.  She is gorgeous inside and out…and didn’t mean to do what happened next, honestly.

We had watched so many “Just for Me” kiddy-perm commercials that we decided it was our time to be made beautiful like the little black girl on the box with her pink and green beret and cute outfit.  Perhaps fixing our hair will fix the rest of us, we thought.  So my sister decided to give me a perm.  We had to hurry before our mom got back from the grocery store; perms didn’t take that long right?  My sister and I searched underneath my mom’s counter for a few minutes but could only find a bottle of white strong smelling stuff, not a box like the commercials advertised.

It smelled bad, so of course it had to be relaxer.  So she put it in.  We waited and waited. Neither of us knew what to do after the stuff was applied to my head.  Swinging my legs back and forth under the rickety chair, we both missed the sound of the front door opening, which meant my dad was home.  He came upstairs, and horror read on his face.

He rushed to find some scissors and started cutting away at my beautifully now-relaxed hair.  I cried in protest.  I tried to prevent him from cutting anymore and placed my hands in my hair…and started pulling away clumps of it.  I cried even more.  After my dad had cut away some of my hair, he washed out the rest of the white substance, and then went to work giving me a low cut.  I looked like a boy and I didn’t understand why.  I didn’t understand what had happened and why I started with curly hair and was now left with no hair.

The makers of Nair should really label their bottles better. 

My first “relaxer experience” stole my hair from me.  It stole the image of beauty I did not know I already had but also desperately longed for.  A relaxer can do that to a woman.  It can make her so desperate for something she will never find that she loses herself in order to worship it. It becomes a god.

Honestly, I am still rapidly working to loosen myself from the grips of this aesthetic worship.  I used to wrestle with the notion that my hair has to be straight for some reason or else I look “unkempt”, “crazy”, “dirty.” But I don’t want to hate Africa. I don’t want to hate my roots.  I don’t want to burn them away hoping they will purify who God made me to be into what man has taught me I am supposed to be.  I don’t want to burn away curly roots, committing chemical arson and flat iron massacres on hair that tell of a history that is not straightforward but turns inwards into itself and loops around and gets tangled and accurately reflects more than any other hair what this human life is about.  But this requires appreciating who I am in entirety. 

One day I had a spiritual moment concerning my image. I discovered in the mirror that the curious figure in front of me had brown eyes and lovely dark skin to match her course “black-but-sometimes-brownish-red-when-in-the-sun” hair.  God had intended her to look that way, and God called her wonderful.

Maybe “fixing” my hair is not the solution, but fixing my perspective and definition of beautiful.  My eyes say that I am beautiful precisely because of how my hair looks, my clothes fit, and my body is shaped; I’d be going back on God’s great handiwork if I tried to “fix” any part of her. 

God never asked me to, society did.  “Fixing” me denotes operating like everyone else when I am called to be uniquely lovely.  And I can’t abandon lovely for “what’s in.”

I don’t hate my roots anymore, and neither should you.  But rather become fascinated with your roots, your hair, your look.  Examine yourself and realize that your body is a message to others that God created someone fearfully and wonderfully. Become curious to what God did when God created you and what God is doing through your current life, and be glad! And be in awe.

Within your existence rests an important message not only about beauty, but about God, the Creator.  Nothing is more beautiful than that.

About the author: Oluwa"Tomi"sin Oredein, born in Nigeria and raised in the United States, is a graduate of University of Virginia.  She’s recently received her Master’s of Divinity degree from Duke Divinity School and is waiting to see what God has for her next.  You can connect with Tomi at her blog: www.tomioredein.wordpress.com.