3:13pm

"Africa" by D'Angelo

...Africa is my descent / and here I am far from home / i dwell within a land that is meant / for many men not my tone...

It's time to take my braids out this week.  I got them done in North Carolina by my aunt when I went to visit for fall break.  It's the second time I've gotten this hair style and I love it so.


I have also been gloating to myself that my hair is natural under it and that is amazing.  However, I feel a sense of security in these braids.  My hair is natural under, but I feel like I am keeping the trend of European hair going with these braids.


But when I analyze again, braiding is an old, old, old African tradition and set of aesthetics.  Therefore, on their own, my braids do not make me a traitor.  But if I get braids to hide something, be it from myself or from those I interact with in the world, I am a traitor.

I cut off all my hair.  I stopped perming my hair in April of this year and have been getting braids every few months to speed up the growth of this natural hair.  This last time I had my hair braided, I let my aunt cut off all the remaining permed hair.  All that was left was this inch long afro of natural, super-coiled hair.


I was proud of it.  Then I was ashamed of it.  Then I was happy with it.  Then I was excited.  Then I was ashamed again.  Then I was indifferent.  Then, I was just looking at me.

I am not my hair.  It is my crown of glory and I want it to be healthy and pretty but I want it to be just as it should.  I am an African girl and my hair is short and tightly coiled and dark brown.  I am an African girl and my skin is dark and smooth and produces little oil and is without many blemishes.  I am an African girl and I have an African worldview.  You are responsible for me and I for you.


I must remember that I am not my hair.  I am not anything that I carry with me on my body.  I am so much more complicated, beautiful, and timeless than this vessel I have been given.  And whomever judges me based on the components of this vessel is doomed to miss my profundity.


I remember what I saw in the mirror when I first saw my natural hair in the afro it is meant to be.  I loved that girl, still.

It is just so unbelievable how stringent, how strong, how usurping this European standard of beauty is.  I see it everywhere I go and I fight in my mind.  However, I am still trapped by it.  I want to just be confident and happy without having to think about it, talk it over with myself, give myself a pep talk.


I am not hair.  I am not this skin.  I am the soul that lives within.