RashidaDiva Shabazz
Stories (1/0)
Hair Don’t make you beautiful!
I am RashidaDiva Shabazz. A light skin brown girl hailing from the Bronx New York. Growing up I always had a head full of long thick hair. Sometimes it was praised and sometimes scorned. It was big and would block the black board in class at times. Bullies in class would walk pass and smack my ponytails out of the way. At home my hair was a treasure. My mother refused to put any chemical treatments in it to straighten it out. She would have me go to the salon to have it washed and blown out so I could get braids. I was tender headed so there was no taming this mane at home. After breaking the stylist blow dryer comb once to many times she said I couldn’t come back. My hair was too much of a hassle for her. I had to learn how to master my own tresses. Which was actually a blessing! It hurt a lot less and I realized I had a gift with creativity. I was 10. I figured out how to make this hair thing work and look fabulous and I never looked back. I would always get complements on my hair as learned more about styling it. Colorism is very prevalent in the African American community. Colorism is treating people different based on their skin tone. People having a dark complexion are looked down upon, not viewed as beautiful, and are overlooked for opportunities. Growing up I didn’t see it because there were all shades of brown in my family and no one was ever demeaned for being dark skin or given extra credit for being lighter. As I grew and began to notice the ways of the society I was a part of it became apparent to me that light skin women with long hair and darker skin women with short hair were treated much different. The beauty bar was set and if you were light with long hair than you were on the up side of it. Darker sisters didn’t get the same love. If by chance you were dark with long hair then you were like a unicorn, “pretty for a dark girl”. The older I got the more turned off I became to the light skin long hair game. I was in college and I called my mother and asked her what did she think about me cutting my hair(it was unprocessed and in the middle of my back which made you liken to rapunzel at that time). She calmly said “Hair don’t make you beautiful”, “you're still you with or without hair “. That was my green light. I came home and made an appointment for a hair cut. When I went to the salon they were confused as to why I wanted to cut all of this long beautiful hair off. I wanted them to leave about an inch an a half. I was gonna go home color it blonde and put some gel in it and wear a curly fro. I was tired of being the “light skin long hair girl”. They didn’t want to cut it so they cut it bob length at first. I demanded they keep going. By the time I was done there was a pile of hair on the floor and freedom in my heart! I went home to finished my vision and was in love. My bad hair days were over. I cut down time to get ready in the mornings and if I was going out. Wash day was a thing of the past and I was free to finally have water fall down my head and hair every single day without the worry of my hair getting messed up when I took a shower. When people saw me initially they didn’t realize that my hair was cut because I would wear it pulled back often. When they noticed it they would be shocked then complementary. It made the guys who were interest in me take another look and really get to know me because I was more than my hair. I wore my hair short for years. I loved it! It was a game changer and I’m grateful that I did it when I did. More than anything I proved to myself that “hair don’t make you beautiful”.
By RashidaDiva Shabazz 4 years ago in Blush