My hair is Jewish New Yorker thick. It’s nappy, tight corkscrew, dread-lock itself deep inside the crown of my head thick. So naturally, when I go to the salon, I get some looks. However, since I’ve had this hair all my life, its become somewhat normal to me and borderline entertaining to watch these people try to comprehend the idea that I REALLY have THIS MUCH curly hair! I’m a sideshow freak to them and I aim to entertain! Most of them are there for various issues, yet, whether they are balding, have stick straight hair (or even sometimes the curly girls themselves) always have the same reaction. Their jaws drop, or they cup their mouths in disbelief, turning to their stylists and saying “WOW. Now that is a head of hair!”
It should be complimentary to me and now it sort of is. However, it wasn’t always like that. When I was younger, my hair was Jew-fro chic. A big ball of curly, frizzy fluff that I could hardly sit still long enough to have combed through and would often fight to be left nappy instead of attempting to brush through the mess! When I was about ten, I got my first perm in Maryland. This consisted of endless tugging, harsh smelling chemical and then the layering of what look like vertical blinds all over my head to sit for 45 minutes. After this, they rinsed my tender scalp, scraping off whatever skin has managed to remain un-mangled throughout the entire process. Is it over? Wishful thinking.
Pulling, tearing, ripping, lengthening, and cutting: those are the sounds of my hair breaking beneath me, being torn to shreds strand by strand from my sore scalp. Now, this nappy girl who started out with these big head of hair now has stick straight hair. It lays limp next to my ears, defeated, dead, raw and not want to be touched for days. The tears cease, the frizz retreats and my fingers are still shaking as I lift one to touch the new processed hair. When the fingers hit my hair, I can feel my brain thumping in spurts beneath them. Pulsing and pounding to a point where I think, was it all worth it? Finally, it’s time to see the result. Three hours, pulling and foul smells all culminate into this one moment when those same people who looked at you in disbelief when you walked in a curly girl stop and regard, “Wow. Your hair looks great!”
I’ve been doing different processes since then and have tried almost every available relaxing and de-frizzing solution possible. So again, this should be normal. But I still feel when I walk in to the salon even now that I’m being watched. That like a sideshow freak, I’m unlike anything these people have seen before and they do not know what to think of me. How did my hair get THAT huge? What’s my ethnicity? They whisper and the stylists are often heard blurting out, “I know right! How would you like to have that head of hair? How would YOU like to be the one styling that?” HAHA. HEHE. Chuckle. Giggle. Today these people get a serious YIKES. Why? Because you’re mostly adults, whispering thirty feet from me about me in hopes I won’t over hear. Also, if they think it’s hard for those stylists to DO my hair, imagine me dealing with it for the past 24 years and the many years to come. I love my hair! Being a curly girl is a piece of my personality weirdly enough and I’d have it no other way.
