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| Wrinkled clothes for the win! |
A group of my friends and I were eating in a restaurant. I piped up to ask a question about the hair of one of the ladies - I was pretty sure that when I'd first met her, her hair was curly, but for the past few weeks, her hair had been straight.
I simply asked her whether she'd used a blow dryer on her hair. She said she had, which elicited a noise of surprise from one of the other ladies and another question:
"So, is it actually your hair?"
The first lady nodded, bemused "Yeah, it's mine. I get annoyed when it's curly, it tangles too much and I hate combing it so I just straightened it (I think the word she used was 'glissant')."
Hair-wise, we were a motley crew - straightened natural, chemically untouched wearing a weave, relaxed, natural in the cutest and roundest afro, braid extensions and...er, me. It was kind of nice that we were all different.
We chatted some more about it, more questions were asked:
Braids: I know you're Brazilian, so is your hair yours?
Under Weave: I'm Brazilian and so is my hair! *laughs*
Me: People do hair tutorials on Youtube -
Everyone else: - Hair?! On Youtube? Really?
They found the idea of it so very bizarre.
I admit, when I first started, I never really considered looking on Youtube, only ever in forums. Fortunately, someone sent me a link and it was upwards from there!
I ended up scrawling some notes on the back of our food receipt for the cutest afro, of some people she might want to Google for style ideas. I know she could probably understand what they were saying, but for me, hair is a leisure activity and sometimes you just can't be bothered to go and look up what they say, because it's too darn hard and it simply shouldn't be.
She doesn't speak a load of English and she loses track when it's spoken to fast, so I tried to think of people who used a lot of pictures and words on their screen, demonstrated what they were saying with actions, didn't have videos with too much superfluous chat and whose names I could remember how to spell.
My list was woefully short and, in hindsight, maybe more inspirational than practical:
Which makes me wonder what other people would have chosen -
who would have made it onto your shortlist?
I used to watch more Youtube tutorials, but then I had to pull away because I would get heartbroken when the hair icons would show so much more growth in less time than me, etc. But I still love to watch them on occassion:
ReplyDeleteNaptural85
NikkiMae (Natural Chica)
Modhutch
My heartbreak/jealousy also flares up something awful when I compare our progress in two years. People talk about accepting hair texture etc but I think accepting your hair's traits may be more accurate - whether it's the fact it breaks more, or frizzes easier!
DeleteHmm, haven't heard of Modhutch before....*goes to google her*