Kinky Curly Hair Growth & Afro Hairstyle

I have mentioned in the past that my teenie weenie afro just takes way too long to grow and if you are trying to track your hair growth every day like I do, then surely it will look as though one's hair is growing slowly. However, I was going thru my monthly pictures for the last 6 months and boy has my hair grown!!

Because of our afro textured hair shape, kinky curly hair is really coiled so it can stretch out a lot. Since a natural hairstyle that isn't braided or twisted will be naturally coiled, then the hair growth will be really hard to notice if tracking it daily. While this may sound a bit obvious, I really cherish my hair growth so I have been a bit too "obsessed" (I'd say that's the word) about growing my hair!

As I was going through the pictures of the last 6 months, I was quite pleased to see that, on a month by month basis, my hair has certainly grown. I would say the growth has been more of an "up and out" growth which, this being my first time growing my kinks, I guess is normal. My hair is not going to be dangling any time soon unless I braid it, but then I am happy to rock out my teenie weenie afro which is now taking on the shape of a full afro. Once it hits the length of approximately 12 inches (according to what I have read and to my sister), then I can get decide what the next hairstyle is, whether it would be cornrows or braids, or maybe dreadlocks (like a young Gary Dourdan!). Or maybe just keep the afro hairstyle and just get some regular trims. I'll see as I have quite some length left to grow and time to think about it.

By the way when I mention 12 inches of length I am talking of the length I get when I pull a lock of hair. When I release the pulling tension on the lock my hair coils back really short which is pretty much what I mentioned at the beginning of this post. Matter of fact, this curly phenomenon is what is regarded as the curl factor in a book I have been reading called The Men's Hair Book (the full title of the book is much longer although that's the main title). I am loving the book so far and would like to review it in this blog soon as this book can help a lot of you guys with learning about your manes. The book is from none other than Rogelio from the Manly Curls site and I am learning so much about hair care and at the same time realizing I don't know as much as I thought I did that I have left a friendly disclaimer above this blog linking to the Manly Curls site if you're looking for hair advice that is more on the professional side. That doesn't mean that this blog of mine won't be of use to you, all it means is that my blog has been more of a starting point for me to document what I learn about kinky curly hair and natural hair as I go along. Blogging for me is a hobby although I do consider myself just a humble blogger with lots of (hair) questions to solve!

Peace.

Hendrick

Michael Jackson Hair and his Former Kinky Curly Afro

I have been way too busy with lots of assignments at university and February has been a real terrible month when it has come to keeping up with my online blogging and hobbies of mine LOL finally I have arranged some time to be posting and I sure do want to take a break (hopefully when Easter holidays come along!)

Today I would like to blog about Michael Jackson. I have always been a fan of Michael Jackson. Even in his later years and I never believed a word of the lies of the media concerning the horrible crimes he was being blamed for without any real proof for that. I guess I am too young to have really experienced the physical degradation of Michael Jackson and I have always remembered Michael as the black kid with a huge afro (which I admire so much!) as well as some great moves, voice and pitch he really had!

When Michael Jackson was a kid, his afro was notoriously big as were the afro hairstyles at the time (we are talking mid to late seventies). Then, MJ retained his African features and his African hair. But slowly Michael Jackson let the jheri curl and texturizer take ahold of him and Michael Jackson's natural kinky curly hair started to become less and less kinky until well, you all know how that went.

It is sad seen a brother of the African diaspora end up like this. I do believe that MJ suffered from vitiligo which caused his skin to fade in colour, but all his surgeries and straight haired wigs looked like an act to blend in with the western crowd and to run away from his African heritage. I would have loved to see Michael Jackson with cornrows or twists hairstyles but after he had the S curls and relaxers, Michael settled with a wig made of long straight hair.

Not that there is anything wrong with all of the above on a personal level but I cannot help but to wonder about the example he set to fellow young black brothers and sisters. Not only in the United States but also in the Caribbean and Africa where skin bleaching is a plague (and I know this from m family in Jamaica). Sure, he very likely suffered from vitiligo but the rest of his physique altering really didn't help to have our brothers and sisters embrace their African roots.

RIP Michael, you will always be loved! :-)

I love my natural hair, do you?

I love my natural hair, do you?

I say and ask the above because I think our hair, and by 'our' I mean African kinky hair, has been submitted and ridiculed for centuries in the western world even though it was an attribute worthy of admiration back in our African homeland. It wasn't until the 1970s that women and men of colour started liberating themselves with their Afros and showcasing to the western world their newfound self-love and love to their African peers.

I love my hair without the narcissist traits. I am not talking of obsession or of putting my hair above anything else. What I'm talking about is appreciating that my hair is what it is because of my ancestry. I am proud to be a black male living in a western country and I respect all races and creeds. However, I cannot help but feel a special affiliation and brotherly love to those of us who belong to the African diaspora and who share a very distant family tree as well as unfortunate distant sufferings that only make us stronger in this day and age.

Brother, sister, love yourself and love your hair!

Hendrick

Love Your Natural Hair, Brother!

"Love your natural hair, brother". I know it is easier said than done, but just love it. Come on, try it.

Your hair shape and texture is genetic, so it means that your naturally kinky and afro textured hair has been passed from generation to generation; you are with your hair representing your family tree and dynasty, so it's senseless, in my humble opinion, to spend your life hating your hair.

I used to see all this "hair hate" all the time with my sister, right until she completely changed her mind and one day went for the "big chop" and cut all of her relaxed straight hair, leaving only a short layer of kinks around her scalp into what is informally known as a teenie weenie afro or TWA. Her hair had meant everything to her before the big chop, so seeing her without her long straight hair was incredibly blunt, not to mention unexpected. I could barely recognize my own sister without her relaxed hair. and when I dared to ask why she had decided to make such a drastic change, she told me: "because I love myself."

It wasn't until some two months later that I finally got to understand what she had meant by loving herself and cutting her artificially straightened hair. My sister changed inside out right after the big chop and she started exercising, lost weight, stopped smoking and had become a much more positive and vibrant person. Through later talks with her, I got to know that she had had enough with the self-rejection that had been imposed to her since she was little. My mother, unintentionally, had instigated the hate that my sister was developing towards herself as my mother would straighten my sister's hair every day and pay for expensive salon visits to get her hair relaxed and lustrous. For some 20 years, my sister had been hating her hair until she turned the tables.

After some further talks with my sister, she convinced me too and I began to appreciate my own afro textured and curly hair. And that's why I am here today :-)

So love your hair brother!

Hendrick