Natural hair care for Black women can be tricky. Natural hair care for Black women on a college campus is even trickier. There are so many societal and familial pressures that make it hard for black women to express themselves through their tresses. Miranda Perry and other black women around campus celebrated the idea of natural beauty with a intimate event hosted in the Intercultural Center. Black women gathered to not only swap natural hair care products but also share their natural hair journey and tips that they’ve learned along the way. The tips and advice that each woman gave was unique to her own story. In the end, black women were given a chance to learn what practices work best for those who are natural but also humor each other with stories about the bad hair decision that made them want to go natural.
Miranda Perry planned the event in hopes that black women around campus could meet and swap hair care products and stories.
Here are her thoughts on the event:
“I definitely think that hair and identity can be linked to a degree. I understand that you have some people who have natural hair but their minds may be processed…” – on how people are conditioned to think about their hair and therefore themselves a certain way.
In response to the importance of Black Hair on a PWI campus “Someone said that night [during the event], taking up space with your hair is so important and just being seen and being okay with who you are is impressive to get to that point where that’s okay for you to say ‘Yeah, my hair goes in the opposite direction than you think it should but you’re going to see it!’ I think it’s amazing to get to that point where you’re okay with it, and you’re just like, ‘I don’t care what you want, society. I don’t care what you want if you’re my boyfriend. I don’t care what you want if you’re my mother. I don’t care what you want if you’re my employer, I’m going to do what I want to do. So, to see more people, even at our school doing it I think shows a shift there. About seven years ago is when the natural hair movement [started gaining traction] but there’s even a shift in our community at Wake Forest in the last couple of years. I think it’s really from seeing other people rock their natural hair. Once you see other people do it and that they’re able to do it [well], you’re like, ‘Okay, I can do this too! They can take care of their hair and still be this busy, I can try that.”
Her response to questions about her own natural journey, “It’s funny because my picture of me on WIN is me with straight hair and my hair was natural at the time but I decided to straighten it to see how long it was and so people have seen that picture and then they see me in person and they say, ‘Oh, I liked your hair better in that picture!’ I’m like, ‘What?!’ It was really just a moment for me to realize what my hair mean to me and what it is saying to other people. So, for me having natural hair on a PWI campus is definitely liberating, it allows me to be free from the constraints and the ideas of who I should be and who I am. Instead of thinking to myself, ‘I am what they think I am’, I’m saying, ‘I am who I say I am, who I want to be, and it doesn’t matter what they think.’ So, from a natural hair standpoint, I’ve never felt insecure about my hair. From growing locs, not necessarily insecure, but awkward just because there’s not that many students walking around with locs. Also, people are highly uneducated about them. The main misconception I hear is, ‘Do you smoke marijuana? The other assumption is that I’m Jamaican, but I’m not. Where do people come up with that? People also think that I don’t wash my hair. Which leads to the assumption that I’m dirty, but I do wash my hair. I don’t explain everything to people but I do correct people. I don’t necessarily educate people unless I see a true interest. ”