Perming your child’s hair?

Posted by Nathalie on October 6, 2007

Every culture has a right of passage. Some are more drastic than others, but each have a unique value of beauty and adulthood.

For example, a small village above Thailand places brass rings around the womens’ necks, disfiguring them until the neck appears to be elongated. It looks strange to us here in the US, but it’s a fancied vision of beauty to them.

Back in the day, I heard about how women in the far east would bind their young daughters’ feet, halting their growth (in the form of broken bones and possible infection/handicap) in order to achieve what was considered as beautiful to them…small feet.

Here in the US (and in plenty parts of the world), many feel that straight, long, flowing hair (such as what the Europeans naturally have) is the standard of beauty. There are plenty of theories as to why the majority here feels this way, but black women, for the most part do not feel that their natural, curly hair is beautiful/acceptable in our society and decide to get relaxers. If you aren’t familiar, a relaxer is a chemical treatment for hair that permanently straightens the hair by breaking down the composition of the follicles and loosening the natural curl that it has. For plenty of women, this chemical treatment is very effective, but for others, it can cause permanent hair loss and a great deal of damage, yet, we still continue to touch it up every six weeks.

Relaxed hair is such a commonality that women with natural hair styles such as locks, or afros are looked at as unique, or rebels to society even. I went natural for two years because I wanted to show people that I no longer wanted to conform to the standards of beauty here in America. I wanted to prove to people that BLACK (in it’s natural state) IS BEAUTIFUL. Unfortunately, due to a slight mishap, and a profound boredom with my hairstyle, I ended up getting a texturizer back in November of 2006. ….but that’s another story…

My question to you is… Do you feel that perming children’s hair is o.k.?

Considering that relaxers are a permanent change to hair texture and can cause great damage leads me to say no. I personally feel that parents should allow for their child to make the decision of getting a relaxer when they’re in adulthood (or at least their teenage years). I’ve seen many instances where parents perm their young children’s hair and end up having to cut it all off later because their hair was too weak/delicate to take such harsh chemicals. I know that ‘nappy’ hair is hard to handle, but a bit of patience can lead to your son/daughter having long, luscious, healthy hair in the long run.

On another hand, what does this say to our self esteem as a race? Why is our natural hair looked down upon (aka “nappy headed hoes“)? Why do we reject our natural look?

I would love your thoughts on this.

For more on going natural, check out Nappturality.com