All about my hair

The sunny and hot days are finally back. It is always around this time of the year that I go back to  my natural hair and I must say that I really appreciate it. Braids, weaves, extensions are the solutions I use during the cold days to protect my hair and to make them grow but what I love the most is having them natural. Hence my desire to tell you about my hair and black people's hair in general after reading some comments (I didn't like) on Greta's blog, In Moda Veritas.

Like each time I'm seeing a post by Greta of In Moda Veritas on Bloglovin', I click and read.

Back in January I was reading a post of her section called "Inspiration". Greta throug it introduces us to women whose style inspire her. That time she wrote about Solange Knowles. Up to there, all was fine by me. I watched the pictures without paying too much attention to Solange outfits. Indeed I am a great fan of this woman but not because she is black like me nor because I like her music (which I am not a fan of if you really want the truth). I don't consider Solange a style icon but a femininity icon.  What I like about this woman is the way she expresses her femininity, and though I said I wasn't sensitive to her being black I should correct my saying. What I like about her is the fact that as a black woman she is really proud of her hair. In my opinion for a lot of us, women, whatever the ethnicity, our hair or the absence of them is very important to us. After all, they are what make us women, hence my admiration for every woman having beautiful hair, and Solange just happens to be one of them.

Solange Knowles

Solange changes a lot her hairstyle but she always goes back to her afro look. In brief to hair without breads, extensions or weave. And rightly Greta in her post chose pictures in which she was sporting the afro hairstyle. Reading the comments below this post I stayed flabbergasted by the reactions of some readers : " This type of hair is inconceivable for me", "she is too hairy", " I like her style but if I were her I would do something with this hair". Reading this last comment I was like "but do what with her hair ?" Black people have curly and frizzy hair, besides, it really is like you see on both the pictures on the top. Black people are not born with braids, extensions or weave. Our hair while gaining in length also gain MUCH MORE in thickness, in brief the longer the thicker. And I can assure you that taking care of them is really time consuming. Solange perfectly explained it on Garance Doré blog here. 

People if you think that when we are born we are like that let me tell you  HELL NO !

This post is certainly very partial, I mean reading the comments I remember swearing A LOT. I am black and I like letting my hair natural. Nonetheless I believe I wouldn't have written anything  like this if I were in France. Living in Italy made such a huge difference for me because I am black. People are watching  me more, sometimes there are mesmerized glances, sometimes there are glances that are telling me to go back to my country ,and when I say my country I mean where they are only people like me.  I think I am more aware about it here in Italy because people when asking me where I am from often make strange faces when I answer France, and insist telling me "yes but where are you  (really) from ?". Obviously this is my own experience and thankfully not every italian is like that.

In such a context I am often judged based on my appearance. In my case on my skin colour and my hair because I don't match with what italian people know. Hence a very stereotyped vision of black people. While I can understand that differences make people curious but also afraid I can't tolerate the comments I read on Greta's blog because on behalf of fashion and style these people don't seem to realize they could be considered racists. When a white girl (cringing writing this) has super long hair it is considered beautiful (or dorky..it depends on people's taste) but when a black girl has huge hair it is considered too hairy ? Why ?

To tell you the truth, the afro hairstyle is not part of the african culture but the braids are. According to me the History of Afro-american and African people is closely linked. First because African-american knew slavery and because the second one knew colonization. I am not here to judge but I can tell that those two experiences have generated in the USA around the 1850's the birth of methods to straighten our hair and make it similar to the occidental one. But slavery, colonization and segregation also gave birth to the afro hairstyle during the 1960's, the era of civil rights in the USA and the period of indipendence on the african continent. In such an atmosphere, the afro look embodied for black people, american or african, their identity, their pride. In brief there was a political and a social meaning behind a simple hairdo that we consider today a ridiculous fact of style.  

I wouldn't usually write this kind of post because my being black with african roots is something which I consider a part of myself but this is not all what I am made of. But this time I think I needed to do it because it seems like even with the internet where we are given the possibility to google about everything people don't take time to get informations. I feel like the more tools we are given to inform ourselves the lazier we are becoming in actually looking for informations. I wrote about black people's hair but needless to say that my opinion is also valid for everybody and everything.

To read this post in italian click here.

ps : a while ago I did have my hair as big as Solange and my pictures there are here to tell "in 2013 my hair was this big". I really intend to make them big like before and have fun styling them. So for now say hello to my baby afro !