SCENE ONE: “My hair…I look like a boy”, were my first words. Note, at this point, all other features on my body that socially certified me as female/woman, were irrelevant. My skin colour and my hair were my identity tokens/(dom)passes. SCENE TWO: The days and weeks, of what felt like eternity, of you trying to recognise yourself. Standing in front of the mirror at least once or twice every hour. Going through memories of ‘the good days’ when you had long relaxed hair. Never stepping out of the house but because the big chop was something I had planned to do, I planned for it; I stocked up on dramatic earrings and headscarves. This is after having done some research on ‘how to look acceptable without my hair’, although natural resources were literally non-existent on the internet at that time. SCENE THREE: The reaction of the other women in my life (in a nutshell). The realisation that I had put myself in the extreme contrast-position to societal constructs of beauty standards, in other words, what you should strive towards to attain the ultimate womenness ← she was a white woman with long, silky straight hair. Meme was part angry, part shocked and partly found me with my t.w.a, an extremely hilarious sight. “My dear, those hairs odi kukutu, you are going to suffer momtw’ omo”, referring to the difficulty the magic wand comb will go through to try and glide through African curl infested black hair strands. Apparently, I had lost that privilege. And so agreed my aunts, my female cousins, my grandmother…all I got were hmmmm’s, ouf’s, mem’s and hewa wa’s (disapproval in sound form). SCENE FOUR: Natural hair required natural, hair products that barely existed in the Namibian scene. Products for relaxed hair or white woman hair, were not a good match with my African textured hair. Just…no. Thank goodness for olive oil.
ACT TWO Started first year of varsity in Durban. At this point, I was suffering from mild depression caused by my own appearance and lack of relaxed hair. So I tried to make sure my 4C twa looked like a 3c twa whenever I stepped out into the public (luckily resources on natural hair were slowly growing on the internet). The societal constructs were the same there too, so I was judged harshly whenever my hair looked African or non-mixed breed by the eyes of other black female students on campus. They all wore weaves or braids, by the way.
SCENE ONE: (In my head) I need curl definition! Gel, curl holding creams, anything to stop my hair looking too extreme African, which would ultimately demote my social standing to “You look like a boy” level. My hair was at t.w.a stage, too short to get long rastas braided in so I could be at peace with my appearance. So, I carried on with my dramatic jewelry and headscarves to exaggerate the fact that I was a female/woman. SCENE TWO: The elating sense of relief I had when I finally qualified to get rastas braided in (oh happy day). SCENE THREE: The humid weather of Durban provided optimum conditions for my natural hair to grow a bit faster. In my mind, my goal was to grow my hair long and then straighten it. Note that I still found comfort in the white woman standard of beauty which had, subconsciously, remained ingrained in me despite the fact that I was moving in the complete opposite direction of the ‘shadow’ beauty. But the longer my hair grew, the more I tried to tie it into a tight bun or, out of shear exhaustion from trial and erroring with natural hair, dared to walk out of my room with my afro looking African. Note again, at this point fellow black female/women also took notice of the hair length and began interrogating me at random on the authenticity and ownership of my hair. “Is that your real hair?”, “How did you grow it long like that?”, “Which products did you use to make it long?”. All aspiring towards the white woman long hair image, but I shared my selfaccomplished knowledge. I won’t lie, I was feeling myself though; a sourceof-reference, source-of-power even. Mmmm! Needless to say, by the time I finished studying in Durban, I had left behind a few t.w.a’s on their journeys towards long natural hair.
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