The Evolution of My Hair

Introducing: Monique Campbell who is a London-born writer. Her work has appeared in Decode Magazine, anthologies such as Brown Eyes and Sexual Attraction Revealed. Monique has articles published on websites including www.literatenubian.org and www.fiba-filmbank.org

The Evolution of My Hair

From plaits to canerows to braids to hair-relaxers and then on to weaves – the journey of my hair seems never ending. Back in the day prior to teeny-bop-hood, during the latter years of primary school when innocence still reigned upon me, having my hair divided in two to four sections used to be the ‘lick’…well so my mother thought.

I had long tresses of thick stranded semi-kinky hair that was marble-black and could locs with ease, which my mother found hard to manage. These two and four-sectioned partings of my hair where the tresses hung limp in my mother’s hands and then transfixed into two or four plaits, were the repercussions of lacking time. And so I continued my primary school years with an inclination to learn how to groom my hair.

Teeny-bop-hood was infested with cravings for change: experimentation took centre-stage. I cane-rowed my hair backwards, frontward, zigzag, incorporated shapes that seemed for paper alone. I braided my hair thin, fat, with synthetic extensions, human extensions, no extensions. I cried experimentation, enjoyed the attention so much so that I dyed half my hair! The colour of the sun as it set upon the hilltop in Sunset Beach, still possessing my inherited frizz that Dax often shocked into waves.

My hair, I thought, was the coolest. Even when weave interfered with my natural long mane, luring me in with the prospect of wispy feathery European hair that moved airily in the wind and brushed across one’s face, I thought I looked the coolest. I was edgy, had those funky cuts set on trend just like those commercial magazines displayed, except most of them did not reflect me. My decision to relax my hair was because I wanted to adopt this look permanently. Have my hair blowing in the wind as it did with the weave, but permanently.

With adulthood came again a time for change. I started to establish my identity, accept the things that made me, me. There were various contributing factors that drove me to my decision for this new type of change. One being that my hair was damaged and had lost its good quality and volume, the other being acceptance; the ability to accept the order and aesthetics of life, no matter which hand got dealt: dark-skin, light-skin, long-hair, short-hair, broad-nose, thin-nose, straight-hair or afro-hair. Ageing is unstoppable as are the seasons that follow one another, unfaltering in their existence.

All that said, I currently stand at a cross-road between principles and the dictatorship of time. At the age of 26 with seven willing years of strenuous management and gregarious results of natural hair under my belt, I am contemplating texturising. Not because I want to aspire to look like someone else or I’m unable to accept the natural conditions of my hair, but because I’m unable to provide my hair with the time it needs.

No longer do I have those spare 4-6 hours to wash, condition and twist my hair every two-weeks so that it looks presentable. My hair comes down to the centre of my back, can easily make three sets of heads and has curls that locs with ease. So my question is this: do I pander to my principles of acceptance? Or do I bow down to the dictatorship of time and put a solution in my hair that will merely loosen the curls and make it easier to manage whilst keeping the natural look (as put by my hairdresser From the Roots)?