Celebrating Natural Hair

Welcome back, Olivia! Olivia, from Write About Birth, has written a few guest posts for us in the past, as well as provided some good questions to ponder! Check out her past articles HERE. (and email me at curlyhairdoideas@yahoo.com if you would like to be featured or have your own article published!)

Today's post is dear to my heart. It is really what's at the core of this blog - the fact that regardless of others we need to find beauty within ourselves and confidence in who we are. No matter if we have straight hair or curly hair. Freckles or bowed knees! :) We are all beautiful and we are all unique! I just love Little K's response at the end of this story... Read on!

 (This is Olivia's 4 year old daughter, "K"! The star of this story...)

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Hair is something that comes in many shapes, colors, and sizes – curly, straight, with waves, or anywhere in between, and black, brown, red, blond, or a mixture of those. Most people are born with some hair, but those babies who emerge into this world with a bald head will soon start growing some. One thing is for sure: all hair is beautiful, and all natural hair deserves to be celebrated.

When the hair in question belongs to a child, that is even more true. Hair is a large part of the way we look, and of course our children are all beautiful and unique; just like their hair. I have black, straight hair. My son has blond, straight hair, and my daughter has blond, curly, and very long hair. Before becoming a mother, I never gave much thought to kids’ hair, but that all changed when my little girl was born with lots of blonde hair, that later turned out to be curly.

Caring for kids’ hair, curly or otherwise, might be a bit of a struggle at times – particularly washing and combing it without tears! Finding styles that make my child’s natural hair look even more beautiful, and styles that keep my daughter’s hair out of her face when needed, has been both fun and frustrating... and a lot easier since I discovered Curly Hairdo Ideas! (awww, Thanks Olivia!) Still, our default hair “style” is letting those long locks flow just the way they want to, in any direction they want, and letting them be as stubborn as my daughter herself. 

Who knew that hair is, in fact, a political issue? I, for one, had no idea! But it is, as my daughter and I have both found out in the four years since she was born. For one, curly hair tends to be quite frizzy and, as I mentioned earlier, stubborn. It does its own thing, rather than our thing. In a society that likes perfection, and is all about looks, apparently that is not desired. Sometimes, we get asked if my daughter’s hair was combed at all, and why mommy was a bad mommy and did not put pig tails in!

Admittedly, as a straight-haired mom, hair that goes all over the place took some getting used to for me as well. But it is part of my daughter, it is gorgeous, and it is just the way it is. Now imagine living in a county where the vast majority of the population has naturally very dark hair, often black, and a country where children are almost universally believed to be “public property”. The number times my daughter gets told that at least she will not have to bleach or perm her hair are uncountable. Thanks for the compliment, but does that mean I should be dying and perming my hair?

Then, there are the women who touch my little girl’s hair and ask her if she dyed it! Mostly, this comment is said as a joke, but sometimes the curious enquirer is actually serious. Grown men, and random strangers at that, are often very fond of stroking K’s hair as we peacefully go about our business. Back in the US, I would tell the toucher I might call the police, but children are public property over here, remember, so apparently everyone has the right to touch K.

“Sir, will you please stop touching my child’s hair? It makes both of us uncomfortable,” is hardly a weird request. More often than not, these simple sentences will not make the touching stop, and it might even end in a “stupid foreigner” type reply. “How come your hair is so pretty and blond, and your mom's is black?” is another nice comment that is usually followed by, “Do you look like your daddy?” Not good when you have a one-parent family – and is it really so hard to understand that actually, the genetic lottery sometimes results in unexpected combinations? The blond hair, by the way, does come from my family.

For K, the questions about coloring and perming are the worst. “Wow, your hair is so pretty! Did you color it? Did you use curling irons?” a bleached young lady asked us recently. K had had enough. “NO! I don’t color my hair! This is THE WAY IT IS! Stop saying that! My hair is beautiful all by itself!!!” she exclaimed. My daughter is right. Her hair is beautiful just the way it is, as is any other hair. It deserves to be celebrated, rather than questioned and joked about.

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As you can see there is absolutely no need to TAME darling K's hair! It's gorgeous and well taken care of just the way it is!!  Thank you so much, Olivia, for sharing your story and Miss K with us! She is an inspiration! If only the rest of us (especially in our teenage years!) had an ounce of her self-confidence!

p.s. Don't forget to visit Write About Birth, Olivia's birthing blog - where you'll learn more about birthing than you knew there was to know! Let her know I sent you, too!!