My hair is a crown God himself placed on my head. My crown of coils is heavy, hard to maintain, and impossible to manage. It is an untamed beast at peace in its natural habitat, and a constant lesson in patience, effort, and self love. This is the hair I was given, in curls, coils, braids, and, now, locs—styles made for my hair.
Given the recorded history of natural hair as a form of rebellion, I am sometimes asked whether or not my hair was a political statement. My first thought is no. The afro didn’t start as a symbol of rebellion: it started as the hair growing out of a person’s head. The only rebellion taking place on my head exists in that I have refused to add to, change, or otherwise tamper with my hair to make it look like that which grows from the heads of a race that once enslaved, oppressed, and killed mine, the effects of which still wreak havoc amongst my people.
But then I look at the people around me, our culture, and our society. I realize that my hair is a political statement. That I would dare to keep my hair as it is without interference in a world that pressures and even tries to obligate my doing so is a political statement, because my hair can be the reason I don't get a job. Because the military, until recently, made it near impossible for a black woman to keep her natural hair in the service. My hair is perceived as some strange beast, greasy, unclean, and warranting the petting, poking, and pressing of strangers without my permission.
My hair has had enough. It refuses to be subjected to chemicals that burn and damage it. It rejects the notion that it must be straight to be beautiful, or in these controlled ringlets of shiny, bouncy curls. It is going to peacefully exist, and prove that it is not a denotation of unprofessionalism, because it has had enough of being changed purely for the sake of job security. It has had enough of being thought of as unclean, dirty, and unkempt when it takes up hours of time being cared for and requires what can be an enormous amount of daily maintenance.
My hair is untamed, and so it shall remain. My hair is to be nourished, maintained rather than fruitlessly “managed.” My hair speaks to a proud people with a history painted in red who wrestled with lions, navigated and lived within the wilderness as kings of a beautiful continent, were stolen and proceeded to build their homes and lives in an inhospitable jungle of hatred and oppression, survived and overcame that with the undiminished strength passed down through the generations, and still struggle to thrive in a society that was made without their input and to deliberately exclude them. The failure of our society to accept my hair is indicative of the continuation of that exclusion. But me, myself, and my hair are not having it.
