Fear of Commitment (To A Hairstyle)

I have never been able to decide between "curly" and "straight." Even when I had a relaxer I still would spend hours putting my head in spiral curls longing for the natural look. Obviously as a wee Snob I rocked the 'fro. Then as I came of age my mother attacked me with the pressing comb. Eventually I graduated to chemical straighters at 13, but quit them cold turkey at 22. I chopped off all my hair and went au natural. But after going curly I found myself wanted to see my hair straight at times. So it was back to the pressing comb. I've had a ton of other hairstyles not pictured in-between curly and straight (braids, cornrows, dreds, an afro, twists, spiral locks, a bob, etc.) but I mostly flit between long and pressed straight or short and curly.

I have no idea what's my best look. The best picture I ever took is that one on the right bottom corner with my hair nice, natural and curly. But I just recently had the mane pressed straight and cut (because the ends were gnarly and my hair looked disastrous), and I'm once again smitten by rocking a long swishy ponytail. (Which I am as I type this morning.)

My hair is the one thing I will admit to absolute vanity about. I have hair complexes. So many complexes the complexes have complexes. Years of everyone making a fuss over it, including yours truly, have caused me to tie about 80 percent of my appearance into my hair. If my hair looks cute I think I'm gorgeous. If it looks bad, I think I look horrendous. There's no in-between. No matter how embarrassing I enjoy the attention I get for it. Although I do get annoyed by the hair fetishes of some menfolk. Nothing is worse that a dude who acts like long straight hair is magical then whines when he finds out the magic happens with a lot of moisturizer and a doo-rag. I am not white. This shit does not do this by happenstance, Mr. I Wanna Girl With Swishy But Non-Oily Hair. And I refuse to get another perm so you'll have to live with me occasionally smelling like someone set a jar of Dudley's on fire.

My mother enjoys attacking me with a pressing comb from time to time because, bless her heart. She kinds of hates the natural. She loves me, but she always thought my hair looked better straight. The constant lie she would repeat was "It's easier to maintain." Um. No. I have a ton of hair. It's a bitch no matter what I do with it. Unless I rock a baldy, this shizz is going to be work. The reality is she gave birth to a child with a lot of hair. Fell in love with it and how it looked and can't bear to see it any other way than straight. It just "looks better" in her opinion. I'm poor and she'll chastise me for a 99 cent Blockbuster Video rental, but will encourage a $70 visit to the salon. She's got a bad hip and if I so much as look like I'm going to flat iron it, she runs and heats up the hot comb for old times sake. She was enraptured seeing my hair as it is currently in those top three photos. Her hair work from when I was a tyke had return to her in all its straight glory. Hilarious.

It'll be an afro again in two weeks. Hope she takes a lot of pictures.

Twisted and Tired

Me sophomore year.Dot and I are busy planning the trip to Harvard, NYC and DC. The logistics are a pain so I'm grateful for Dot and her help. She's my hero in this, especially with the whole unplanned bipolar hurricane that blew through.

Speaking of which, I'm doing well. I see my doctor for a follow-up Thursday. I don't have much of an appetite though, which isn't good considering the harsh medication I'm ingesting on a daily basis. My memory has improved although I still struggle with annoying things like remembering what day it is or how to do basic math, something I was once pretty good at.

Mama Snob's birthday is Friday and I feel like a schlub because my car is in the shop and even if it were here I can't drive because I'm not used to the meds yet. So the present is going to be old school this year and homemade. (Don't worry. Mama Snob is a genteel Southern lady. She thinks the internet is a crochet stitch.) But I'm like a drunk when I drive. So I have to rely on the mommy person and the daddy person to get to and fro making buying a present a no-go (even if I technically got her a present early a month ago).

Tiffany, my BFF from high school, has been great. She brought her babies by to cheer me up and I can't be unhappy with a giggling kid in my arms. I told her instead of meds she should just let me have a baby for one hour a day.

(More after the jump)

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Randomness: My Hair, Part III (And Then My Mother Attacked Me W/ The Pressing Comb)

My mother, despite the fact that I am 31, still sees my hair as her property and because she helped grow it, cultivated it and "loved" it for most as long as she has loved me, she got a special kind of happy when she saw that I blow dried it straight. (Love her to bits, but she's actually part of my Negro Derangement Syndrome with the hair and such.) Even though I told her not to do it. That I didn't want her to do it and she too declared that she did not want to do it, somehow a pressing comb "magically" appeared on the stove and I was viciously attacked to old school, press n' curl results.

She only singed me once, but after decades of "home training" I didn't even move.

She also cut off about a half-to-an-inch of split ends. And is now she's very, very happy, bouncing around the house on her bad hip saying things like, "Now you should wear it like this all the time maybe!"

God. What did I look like before to her?

I kid you not. When I first went natural in 2001 and showed up at my house with an afro you'd think someone had DIED in the family. The silence. The anger. All the stages of grief both my parents wen through.

And I thought I was the sick one.

Anyway! Way to go, Mama Snob! You can still wield a hot comb!

Randomness: My Hair

My hair last summer. June-ish. In twists.

As I've mentioned on the blog a few times, I have hair issues.

Not as in my hair is unmanageable or that I hate my hair or that it's some odd color. No. I have an unhealthy relationship with my hair based on the fact that people made such a big deal out of it when I was a little kid and I thought, for years, it was the only thing that made me beautiful.

For years my hair was long. I wore it pressed straight. It's very thick and healthy (even when I treat it like garbage). Sometime around junior high I got a perm, which spelled the end. I still had long hair, but it was somewhat shorter, broke off easier and was progressively becoming more and more thin.

Did I mention I also have a fear of going bald with that horrid receding hairline that happens to us sometimes from too tight braids or bad perms?

Then, as I realized I was unhealthily obsessed (including the various assholes I dated who all threatened to dump me if I ever cut it), I decided to chop it all off and go natural. Which I did for seven years. Whenever my hair would start to grow back I'd chop it off again, unable to come to grips with it and my own personal demons.

Then four years ago I told myself no mas. I was accepting that, curly or straight, I liked having a lot of hair. So if that meant an unGodly amount of maintenance and pain in the ass, I would never cut it again, no matter the urge. A lot of the urges were out of my own form of self-mutilation in a way, wanting to destroy some part of myself that reminded me of an unpleasant time in my life (namely my horrid starter marriage).

But I held true to that and did not cut it. I also didn't take that great of care of it either. (Does letting it get matted and do whatever it wants count?) Yet for some reason I decided to wash and blow dry the hair in an effort to make it easier to cornrow. In the middle of doing it I realized that my hair had grown extremely long. Not Cousin It or anything, but it was back to the middle of my back, in all its thick, crazy glory.

Part of me was pleased. Part of me was horrified. But I'm not cutting it again, so now I have to decide whether or not to go ahead and cornrow it OR go through the finishing process of clipping the ends and curling it under so I can wear it straight for the first time in nearly two years.

Decisions. Decisions.

And don't get me started on the political ramifications of black hair. That is part of my problem. I have no desire to rehash and psychoanalyze why I have this most common form of Negro Derangement Syndrome. I love long hair. I hate long hair. My face is too chubby to rock a baldy. What does it all mean? Headaches. Just gives me headaches.