Natural Beauty Spotlight : Leela James

Her first album entitled ‘Change is Gonna Come’ was released back in 2005. Her voice is a timeless, sweet raspy mix of soul and grace, and one attribute that made her stand out against the rest was her beautiful, full mane of natural hair. Come on, have you ever seen anything like it?!?! It’s gorgeous!!!

Check out Leela Jame’s official site for more pics.

Men Vs. Women

Can someone answer this question for me? Why does it seem like men can grow their hair so easily when women have to fight for it?

It’s just not fair! Men don’t’ even need long hair! We spend so much time and money in the salon and on countless products to help our stuff grow, and theirs grows with little or no effort! What do they do that’s so different than us?

Dissapointments of going Natural

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again “I’m the type of chick who gets bored with her hairstyles…QUICK.”  I’ve had several haircuts, up-do’s, colors, and in between that, I’ve even found time to fit in weaves…I’ve sampled a good array of extensions from quick weaves, jaw string ponytails, to micros, kinky-twists, sew ins, and …I hate to admit this, but I’ve had a real crusty crochet weave too.

So let’s get to my 2 year journey in the life of nappiness…. My hair was going through a loooong period of ugliness. It was as thin, stringy…and it got so bad I didn’t feel comfortable that my current methods of hair care were going to cut it. I knew, I had to do something drastic in order to “bring sexy back”. At the same time, I started to get some inspiration from women like:

Tracy Ellis Ross

Jill Scott

I also got addicted to natural hair care forums such as nappturality.com and from there, I was hooked. I knew there was no chance in hell that I was going to be cutting all of my hair off at once. NO chance!!! So, I decided to wear weaves/braids until I had enough natural hair to cut off the permed ends and still look good.

My natural hair felt so soft…so silky!  I just KNEW it was gonna be fly once I debu’d my natural look.  But to be quite honest…my natural hair was a big disspointment.  I didn’t look ANYTHING like the women I see on tv (should have known that was gonna happen since tv/magazines are so fake)

Here’s a little picture of me when I first cut off all my permed hair aka “The Big Chop”

I rocked the afro for about two years, hoping that it would eventually transform into a “Tracy Ellis-Ross” do’.  Unfortunately, that never happened, and I went ahead and got a texturizer.

I have the UTMOST respect for natural women out there.  They are holding it down for us permed sisters.  But I want someone to tell me.  Honestly…were you disappointed when you tried to go natural?  Did anyone else have a similar experience?

Perming your child’s hair?

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