Life Is Changing and I've got the Itch.

For me, with change in my life, comes change with my hair. I'm not sure if it is a coping mechanism or a form of self expression, but I'm very much a person who expresses what I'm feeling emotionally through my hair. Looking back at pictures of myself over the years, this can be seen greatly. From the time in high school where I was feeling rebellious, went to a cheap salon and had the beautician cut off all of my hair, to the beginning of my freshman year of college when the freedom I felt at being away from home sent me into a hair dying frenzy. I went from jet black to auburn (or as my dad called it when I came home one weekend and shocked my parents, "big red") then blonde, and finally, superman blue-black -- which resulted in a weird shade of green that I wholly embraced!

The change came again when I left university for technical college, and decided to go natural. Then again when I was going through some heavy emotional things and chopped off my hair on my own (horrible experience.) The pattern here is that when I'm feeling a change in myself or environment, I do something drastic to my hair.

So lately I've gotten the itch again and I want to preform a random act of expression on my hair. I think this has to do with my oldest daughter starting school. Maybe it's the difference I feel around the house with her not being here during the day that has me wanting to take a pair of clippers to the side of my head, I'm not completely sure. Nevertheless, I do want to give myself a funky, new style. Namely, I want to have Hubby fade a section of my hair on the left side of my head. Though I've experimented with my hair, I've never gone the asymmetrical route, but I'm thinking I might.

Life is changing and I think my hair will change with it...

(example of how I want my side to look)

Rockin' My Fro

Yesterday I channeled Pam Grier's Foxy Brown and wore my hair out, big and free. I loved it!! There is something about having big natural hair that makes me feel like I'm on a whole nother level of cool. But more than that, there is something about rocking a large and in charge fro that gives me the feeling of realness that I don't get when my hair is styled in other ways.

My afro got me thinking about pictures of my mother with her hair picked out and the stories she told me about wanting to have a big fro, but her hair lacking the texture needed to really rock one. She and her sisters would tightly roll their hair up at night and pick it out in the morning to achieve the look that all of the down black people were wearing back then, you know, in the late sixties and seventies.

I couldn't help but wonder what happened to that natural mentality that so many black people had back then. What happened to being as black as you could be from head to toe? Why is it that the very same people who wore huge Afro's back in the day, don't any more? When did women stop with the big, bountiful fro's and begin straightening their hair again and why?

I'll have to call my mother up and chat with her about this, but I thought I would share it here first to get your take. Do you believe that the embracing of natural hair was a phase to a lot of the people involved, a way to be cool, something to do? Had it to do with cultural expression after years of conforming? Or was it something else? What are your thoughts?

Bag O' Hair & Finding My Footing

I've already posted about cutting my hair off after growing it out naturally for 3 1/2 years. Now I thought I would show you just how much hair was left after my latest damage induced BC.


Click on pics to enlarge.
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On another note, I'm trying to come up with a good name for this blog. Seems like most of the names I've come up with so far are already in use. Great minds and all that jazz, I guess. I think I've come up with a name now that won't need to be changed, but if the need arises, please bear with me. The site address will remain the same, so no worries there.