Au naturelle

I've found myself contemplating, planning, making lists and trying to decide on what I should do with my hair, is going natural the answer? Let me pause for a definition: going natural means to stop processing my hair with a relaxer treatment. The relaxer straightens my hair, by breaking down the proteins that give my hair its makeup, but it also strips the hair of priceless protein oils for growth. Ergo, hair is a mess.
I've found myself obsessively thinking about how to go forward with my hair because if you don't know: maintain black hair is a long and arduous process. Why? I don't know, but let me demystify a few common misconceptions or things you just don't know when it comes to black hair.  My hair wet doesn't look the same once it's dried (unless you want to wait 2.5 hours). Washing my hair is an ordeal, it takes time - wash, deep condition, blow dry and flat iron. I'm tending to my hair so much on Sundays, I feel like I have to break have dinner for energy and go back to taming. My hair is thick - it's healthy for the most part (knock on wood), but it's thick. It's hard to maintain with my workout plan - ever notice in the gym, women either have "gone natural" (afros, twists, dreds) some other form of natural styling, but very few are relaxed and breaking a sweat. It's pretty much impossible and becomes an ultimatum it's either nice hair or a fit bod.

To me it's six in one hand half a dozen in another - relaxing your hair, hoping for little to no breakage OR going natural? I'm sorry, but I don't think I can deal with the TWA (Teeny Weeny Afro). Definition: TWA is the beginning of the natural process, when the person going natural makes the big chop, cuts all her hair down to get rid of the relaxed hair, what's left is a teeny weeny afro.

On the other hand I've seen evidence of perpetually relaxing and hair loss that can come of that. Plenty have seen the movie "Good Hair", but you probably only know a small dose of the reality that the documentary reveals. While Chris Rock so eloquently tried to explained to the nation the history and conundrum of black hair, it's not as easy as you think to go through and get rid of your process treatment. When you think about the time invested over years and years to see it do nothing, but make things worse? Makes you wish there was a warning label with the long term effects. Then again, it probably wasn't your decision - I can just see my Dad now, struggling with this massive ball of hair wondering "what can I do to my baby's hair?" and a Just For Me commercial comes on like an answer to his prayers.
Going natural won't save me any time - in fact I'll probably go back to where this journey all started and wonder - what am I going to do with this hair. 

So now that I've talked myself in circles, getting no closer to a decision, and making a confusing situation even nappier, here's my true question what is really going to work? Or maybe another peel off the old onion of life, is letting me know I'm going to need to accept what I have and make it work?
Either way, it's Sunday - so I have some hair maintenance to attend to. Until next time my dear readers!

Abajo? Or Going Up?

I live in Washington Heights, which means I daily regret learning French throughout my academic years. I have a good friend that consistently translates for me; reading signs posted in my building, helping me tell my hairdresser to hurry because I have another appointment -- the usual interactions. Although he never forgets to mention that I need to learn Spanish and that I can't keep just nodding in agreement when people speak to me that I might unknowingly sign myself up for modern-day slavery. And then I rationalize - I imagine it's like a foreigner getting dropped off in the middle of Harlem and trying to understand what people are saying: "Yo, 'ey cuz.. whatido" or "wheredeydodat at"... they don't really need to know what they are saying to move along in their plans - and they don't think twice about it. Why should I?

But this is the Heights, there's so much going on around you, you WANT to know what's going on. Ironically, I've never seen the musical "The Heights", but I recently attended an event for the New York Beacon (a Harlem paper I occasionally freelance for) and they were honoring a Dance Company, where the performance featured the 2008 Broadway cast from The Heights. They performed: $96,000, which to anyone that has not see the play, this is a story of what each of the residents from the Heights would do if they won $96,000 from the lottery. It was a great number and it accurately described the neighborhood I live in, believing $96,000 could get them into a higher echelon, some place they only imagine on TV or in the movies but definitely outside of the hood -- no spoiler alert here, go see the play and then take a trip to Washington Heights and report back. You'll see.

 While, I've adapted survival techniques for living in my Dominican saturated neighborhood and learning that some of the events that happen are typical and some just hood-rich, I just watch and listen, or politely answer caliente to just about any question I'm asked in passing (my best guess is they are talking about the summer heat wave).

I've learned this neighborhood is an acquired taste -- you go to sleep to merengue music (or are woken up by it) and walk outside to short Dominican women selling mangoes in plastic bags, it has personality and the rent is cheap - so I'll stay, save up and I'll learn a few more words in Spanish - tal vez...