After the Sandra incident, my aunt decided to "work with my hair". I can't tell you the countless concoctions or weird smelling potions that were applied to get my hair to grow. Things for horses, grease with sulfur, mystery brown liquid that you added to your grease. This continued for a few years (I think 2).
One day when she was walking me home, (yeah back when parents used to walk their kids) I was in fourth or fifth grade my aunt announced to me "You can start combing your own hair now." I looked up in shock. "Really?" "Yeah. You old enough." This was like a rites of passage. After years of being punished for "playing in my hair" this was hard to believe. No more being popped with the comb for not sitting still. All of the years of experimentation on my dolls could now be done to my own hair, with my own hands. Needless to say I was stoked.
I soon found out that my hair would not do what my straight haired dolls would do. I also did not have access to any haircare products or styling tools because my aunt had a Jherri curl and her daughter had a perm. I used rubber bands , grease and water. My signature style became Afro puffs. I would part my hair down the middle, then split the two halves into thirds resulting in six, what I thought were very cute, Afro puffs. Once I tried to leave the back out in bangs. I was brought back to reality real quick. Being adminished,"little girls don't leave their hair out." Not wanting to be accused of being fast or too grown, I went back to the puffs. I rocked this style for about a year. Couldn't nobody tell me nothing , until someone did. One of my aunt's best friends commented on my hair, saying that she needed to do something with it. The next day when my aunt came home from work she announced that she had something for me. From inside her black plastic bag, she revealed a Just For Me perm. Although I was sad that I would be losing my puffs I though that my at least my hair would look like my counterparts at school. My cousin applied it in the bathroom and instructed me to maintan it with the Just for Me conditioner which was like Pink oil moisturizer. Whenever I got a new perm, I applied it(yes I was doing my own perm at age 10) from root to tip like I'd seen my cousin do, not knowing I was killing my hair.
One day when she was walking me home, (yeah back when parents used to walk their kids) I was in fourth or fifth grade my aunt announced to me "You can start combing your own hair now." I looked up in shock. "Really?" "Yeah. You old enough." This was like a rites of passage. After years of being punished for "playing in my hair" this was hard to believe. No more being popped with the comb for not sitting still. All of the years of experimentation on my dolls could now be done to my own hair, with my own hands. Needless to say I was stoked.
I soon found out that my hair would not do what my straight haired dolls would do. I also did not have access to any haircare products or styling tools because my aunt had a Jherri curl and her daughter had a perm. I used rubber bands , grease and water. My signature style became Afro puffs. I would part my hair down the middle, then split the two halves into thirds resulting in six, what I thought were very cute, Afro puffs. Once I tried to leave the back out in bangs. I was brought back to reality real quick. Being adminished,"little girls don't leave their hair out." Not wanting to be accused of being fast or too grown, I went back to the puffs. I rocked this style for about a year. Couldn't nobody tell me nothing , until someone did. One of my aunt's best friends commented on my hair, saying that she needed to do something with it. The next day when my aunt came home from work she announced that she had something for me. From inside her black plastic bag, she revealed a Just For Me perm. Although I was sad that I would be losing my puffs I though that my at least my hair would look like my counterparts at school. My cousin applied it in the bathroom and instructed me to maintan it with the Just for Me conditioner which was like Pink oil moisturizer. Whenever I got a new perm, I applied it(yes I was doing my own perm at age 10) from root to tip like I'd seen my cousin do, not knowing I was killing my hair.
0 comments:
Post a Comment