What’s wrong with natural hair?

“All across Africa, women are either frying their brains with hair relaxers or damaging it with weave-ons.

Put a group of 10 women in a room, and nine will have false hair. It simply does not make sense.

Just think about it. In order to weave on hair extensions, black women cornrow their natural hair and sew or glue either a horse’s tail or another woman’s hair on top of this natural hair. Seriously, really think about it.
Does weaving make any sense? What can make a race hate itself so much it has to go to such lengths to disguise its looks? Weaving and hair relaxing is not just a choice of hairstyle. It is a deep, deep issue which tells the rest of the world that the natural African hair is ugly and therefore needs to be kept hidden,” writes Akua Djane in the October issue of the New African.

Her column entitled; Reflections of an ordinary woman: The black woman and the beauty myth, has inspired this article.

Djane argues that African women have allowed the West to dictate what a beautiful woman should look like.

“If we are to believe the women we see taking part in beauty pageants, advertising campaigns, and music videos, then a beautiful woman is clearly defined as one with long straight hair,” she writes.

Djane has a serious problem with how black women have allowed this idea of beauty to be dictated to women.

Take it or leave it, beauty comes with a huge cost but for the womenfolk, without sounding chauvinist, the cost is much more astronomical.

It is now an accepted norm that it is expensive to maintain a woman. Business entities are cashing in on the beauty crave and catch phrases such as 'mind blowing hair styles' and 'hair that talks' have come along with beauty adverts.

Dealing in hair extensions seems to be a lucrative venture if the number of women employed at the Stripes Zambia Limited in Lusaka's Villa Elizabetha is anything to go by.
And the mushrooming of hair saloons and beauty parlours adds enough credence to this increased commercial interest in hair make-ups.

Today, a man who accompanies their woman to her fancied hair saloon for the latest hairstyle is considered more of a gentleman than the one who just bankrolls the whole activity. Further, there is another perception that a woman can spend her last cobble to do her hair even if she does not have certain essentials within the house. However, this is subject to debate.
To others, these developments are an indication that a lot of social tastes have changed so much for
Africans ever since the time our forefathers got 'invaded' by the people from the west.
But other schools of thought may argue otherwise.

This article is meant to explore the definition of African female beauty as illustrated in the contemporary hairstyles that decorate the heads of African women, which have been viewed by some, including women, as copycat trends from the west.

But what do the women and men say about the above issues? It did not take me long to find out.

A young working class woman, Agness Chashi, who was found doing her hair at a saloon in Buseko Market, defended her curly weave hairdo and she described it as an issue of convenience and not a blind inclination to Western mannerisms.

"Most of these things we use them because of convenience. It is not because we have lost it. Personally I find it difficult to have my hair. You get tired of it. It breaks. You get tired of doing your hair every day," Agness says. "I am the one who is spending money to treat my hair. If somebody is saying we have lost it, that is their own opinion. Natural (hair) is very difficult to maintain, that is why people would treat. When you treat, it comes with its own challenges, hence the convenience of getting different wigs. Even the Europeans they get to treat their hair. Hair just has to be maintained and most of them also they have to use wigs. If that is western influence, well, whatever."

Mubita Muyambango, a taxi driver in Lusaka town, defended the women and their hairdos, saying beauty had always been part of the African heritage and it would be wrong to categorically classify it as a catch of Western fashion fever.

"Beauty has always been there in African tradition. They wore beads, bracelets, even hairstyles, all those have been part of African beauty. So one can't say it is a form of western influence," Muyambango said. "Hairstyle decorations, piercing of the ears, these are some aspects of African beauty that people forget.

The arrival of the make-up enhanced that aspect. The arrival of the make-up kit also bridges African beauty and European beauty. Make-up also existed in the orient."

Muyambango said his definition of a beautiful woman was one with a nice hairdo.

But another woman who was spotting a neatly shaven head but did not want to be identified, explained why she stopped stretching her hair.

"I was tired of my long and relaxed hair. I had nice long natural hair when I was in primary and secondary school and these creams kind of spoiled my hair. Instead of looking rich, it became thin and because of tying it all the time at the back I used to have a headache.

So I decided to cut it and I can breathe now and it makes me look younger since it is short," she says. "I was just tired and people told me I look nice, so it is okay. Even my husband likes it better like this. People have different reasons as some have hard hair, which can't just do in natural hair, so they have to relax that hair. My daughter has very soft hair, which does not need any relaxing."

The treating of African hair has evolved over the centuries from the wire combs, locally known as visakulo, to the hair dryers, hair tongers and hair blowers but is this a cultural metamorphosis influenced by the west?

Is this some form of fashion neo-colonialism or a departure from the African cultural reality?





Source : www.zambiapost.com