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I am so tired of the whole straight hair thing. It is true that we all seem to want what we don’t have. I have wavy hair and always wanted straight hair that was low maintenance. My two bio daughters have the hair I always wanted and they want me to curl their hair. Mita and Enu treat straight hair as the top of the beauty spectrum. This is a very touchy issue with many people.
The straightening of black hair is so controversial, I tried to stay out of it. I tend to lean towards all-natural and really didn’t have the desire to change the girls’ hair. Coming to the US and seeing all the options women have in hair styles, they were obsessed with it. So, I went to my local beautician who specializes in textured hair and she taught me to straighten hair with a blow drying and ceramic hot iron. I have far from mastered this and can never make it how she does it. To be fair to myself, I have cropped hair for a reason! I am all thumbs with irons and combs. I think I do pretty good with braids and twists though and tend to do those on the girls more often. I think my twists look better than my straightening any day. They, however, think that my bad straightening job looks better than the twists.
As you may have guessed, I’m tired of the whole subject and cannot see what all of the fuss is about. I’ve had black friends tell me to straighten their hair, transracial adoptive moms ream me for doing this same thing. It’s not about making everyone happy. I need to make my family happy and build a good sense of self-esteem for all of my children. Lately I have realized that talking does no good. It just frustrates everyone. They don’t want to believe what I say. It reminds me of the old saying,”You have to tell me I’m beautiful, your my mom.”
This past weekend I took Mita to our beautician and she gently, but firmly told Mita that there is not permanent way to straighten her hair and have it low-maintenance. She expanded on how chemical straightening still takes a lot of upkeep and time. I think Mita got it. I really think she realized that we are all different and that is okay. Feeling really good, we went home and the first thing Enu said was, “AHHH, I want my hair straight too!”
Here we go again!
