I Am Not Afrocentric - I Am A Black Woman

400 hundred years without a comb

For any of you that have been reading here any length of time you will remember when I made the decision to go natural regarding my hair. It wasn't something I obsessed over or anything that required a lot of internal dissection. I simply didn't want to chemically relax my hair anymore, reason being - tired of the beauty shop appointments that took five to six hours out of my day. Tired of sitting in those shops stewing with the other four women who all had the same 9 o'clock appointment I had. Tired of avoiding water parks, swimming pools, and rainy weather in a fervent attempt to maintain that hair style I'd waited five to six hours to acquire. Just tired.

So here I am with my curly, kinky, tightly coiled tresses enjoying to the fullest a new found freedom that I wouldn't have known existed had I not made the decision, and loving it.

I don't mind people asking if they can touch it or what products I use or complimenting me on how bold I am to have gone the natural route. To be honest being bold had nothing to do with it. I was being me.

There is, however, one thing that causes these locks to tighten on my head instantaneously and that is when someone calls me Afrocentric! Not that there's anything wrong with being Afrocentric but seriously...

Afrocentric?

I've never studied African culture, philosophy, not even a significant amount of  that continent's history do I know much about and that says a lot considering it's the continent that my ancestors more than likely originated from.

It's hard for me to understand how doing something as natural as not using chemical products to alter the dynamics of your hair can be viewed as Afrocentric.

Have we lost our own identity so much that being who you are, who you were naturally born to be, means that you've chosen a more ethnically inspired way of living. I think not.

 Not one time in the entire 30+ years of me  relaxing my hair did one person call me Euro-centric. For me, there is something profoundly wrong with that and with the way people are thinking.

I talked to a friend of mine about these Afrocentric comments. Her answer was that people think it's a compliment. It's their way of setting you apart from the norm.

The what!?

Suffice it to say, I asked the wrong person. Because contrary to what society says or anyone else - this is the norm - if norm means normal.

I don't know. Maybe it's just difficult to revert back to something that woc tried for so many years to get away from. We wanted to look the same, to fit in with the universal idea of what's beautiful and what's not.

How anyone chooses to wear/style/chemically treat their hair is personal. I love all varieties, lengths, textures and tones. So, no, I'm not one of those who parade around attempting to convince others that being natural is the only way to go. Whatever works for you, rock it!

Just think before you speak and realize the implications of what you're saying.