I'm glad you've made peace with your hair.

I'm glad you've made peace with your hair.

but yeah. i hated perms. and petroleum jelly didn't protect me from the chemical burns. sounds like you had a better experience with the chemicals than me. I wish I had been you back then.

The Black hair care industry is a multi-billion dollar industry, but the majority of the economical benefits do not go back into the Black communities, due to the simple reason that the owners of the beauty supply stores are Korean and they have a monopoly or stronghold over the industry and that money that leaves our community goes into their community.

We as a people need to understand to compete economically in this country we need to have financial empowerment and that could simply stems from us supporting our own Black owned beauty supply stores and buying Black owned and manufactured hair care products and by doing so the dollar can circulate our community multiple times and touch many of our people’s hands before leaving the community, but now it only touches one hand, if that before it leaves the community.

I believe that this is going to be a very important topic that Mr. Rock will cover and that we should closely pay attention to the details that he will present and use that information to better position the Black community in the Black hair care industry.

T.L. Johnson, CEO Ebony of Essence, LLC
http://www.EbonyofEssence.com

Regarding the Oct. 4 Sunday Style & Arts story “You Grow, Girl; As Chris Rock Airs the Secrets of the Salon, Black Women Untangle Feelings About 'Good Hair' “:

I enjoyed the article, but doesn't every woman want hair other than what she's got?

I am 100 percent Irish American (as far as I know), cursed with curly (some would say “frizzy”) brown hair, though by now, after so many years of coloring it, who knows what hue it is?

I, too, longed for shoulder-length straight hair. I still do, but at 69, I know it isn't possible. My horror stories involve hair wrapped in socks (yes, footwear) to make long sausage curls. I dreaded the Saturday nights when Aunt Hannah was the designated hairdresser. If you so much as breathed deeply as she tried to brush out the snarly mess, whack went the brush. Another undiagnosed concussion!

Black or white, we are sisters under the skin. We have more similarities than differences. I pray that women can unite in action and prayer, working together for peace and understanding.

CATHERINE QUINNAN

Dunmore, Pa.

all my mom could manage for me was a 'doo doo ball'…. remember those? she tried to laugh about it, but i was the little girl who didn't want a 'doo doo ball' on top of her head. i'd have gotten over it, if not for the name. 'bad hair' means 'doo doo ball' instead of afro puffs or ponytails………… hey, way to confirm one's hair is (excrement). i didn't understand my mom was trying to do the best she could with my hair, and it was just a name that was going around the black community for a perfectly acceptable style. all i 'saw' was the name.

i wonder who came up with it?

afropuffs are usually gorgeous, though. I haven't seen a bad afro puff, yet. they work on just about everyone…… as long as you have enough hair to do it.

as for more work without a perm….. you'll be happily surprised to find out that's not true at all. it's just that we as black people have associated 'straight' with 'less work'……. no matter how much work is put into straightening.

good luck with your hair choices.

unlike most of the women here, it's because trips to the beautician traumatized me back in the day. my hair traumatized me. I used to hate going to the beautician, because most of those women always had too many customers at one time and I always ended up getting chemical burns on my scalp because I would be sitting in a chair for 30 and 40 minutes with relaxer on my scalp; and (get this) the relaxer STILL wasn't enough, had to go through the pain of a straightening comb on the tiny hairs at the back of my neck and behind my ears… which led to actual burns in those areas. I hate pain, but I learned to tolerate pain because pain was the only way to have 'good' hair. I learned to tolerate the flaking of the hardened white-yellow scabs all over my scalp. I never learned to tolerate the brown scarring and skin tightening of the hot combs. I wanted to be free. I didn't know how to be free. No one else around me knew how to be free, either. Naturals were 'old fashioned' by that time, and some things were too 'black' to be acceptable.

i did not enjoy being bussed then being driven to a beautician and spending the whole day there. i had 'bad hair'. i also never had enough hair to wear braids like some of the other girls in school, so it was always the 'mushroom' when that became popular. or a wrap. or a Supremes cut and style. Or a jheri curl (which for some reason was the only chemical process my hair would grow with). A jheri curl was the only way I ever had hair that was shoulder length, but jesus you couldn't do anything with a jheri curl. Jheri curls were extremely expensive to upkeep. But that was the style, and god help any little black girl who wore a natural after the 70s where I lived.

kind of like god help the dark skinned child. or the west indian child.

yes, I was jealous of all the girls with hair down their back, or who could wear cornrows, or french braids, or braided pigtails. finally, when I got to middle school I was like 'i want to cut all my hair off'. no one would do it. it was unthinkable. it wasn't worthy of discussion. something was apparently wrong with me for not wanting straightened hair. i couldn't really express how I felt about the chemical burns and straightening comb burns and not being able to swim or take a shower or basically live. i'm lazy. i am not the priss and pamper type. i get bored having manicures, though I've always liked the results when someone else did it. it wasn't something I would have gone out of my way to do, except for someone else — and those are the only times I've ever paid to have it done. maybe something is wrong with me. to be prissed and pampered only meant being ignored while beauticians tried to take care of a dozen people at once, and physical pain.

Remember the Sinbad comedy sketch in Atlanta, where he talked about black women who proudly wore hats to cover up their 'bad' hair and showcase the one straightened lock they still had? and the audience laughed. I wonder how many went home and stopped playing 'touch up the ends' games, and how many thought they could still fool somebody as long as they fooled themselves?

It's all good. Again, I fully admit to being jealous of anyone with 'good' hair.

I bought a wig once. It was a 'gift' for a lover at the time who was going through a 'wet white woman hair' period. And frankly, I thought it would be neat to perform a certain sexual act with hair brushing him. Neat for him, and neat for me to be able to control something like that. 'Long' hair at last, and the advantages of long hair. More pleasure for him, and more pleasure for me to give him pleasure through an additional tactile sensation. I don't know if that makes sense. The wig would have looked great on a white woman. Not so much me, but there was no one to help me make a decision about what would look best for me ethnic wise. I don't blame the shopwomen. They were white, and I wouldn't have expected them to know what was best; in their defense they really did try to help me. And it worked, right up until I looked in the mirror one day and said 'this isn't me'. And I felt foolish.

I've been 'relaxer free' for a little over a decade now. wash and go, pick it out. no more ill fitting swimming caps which did nothing to protect my hair or the chemical processing. no more 'touching up'. no more fear of beads. no more scabs. no more burns. no more pain.

i've never had a weave. glue guns and needle point and 12 hours sitting in a chair are not for me, and i'd feel bad putting a beautician through that. i'd feel bad putting another little kid with relaxer in their hair through that. but i'd feel bad putting a beautician through that, because i remembered how hard those women would work; i wondered if they had lives beyond the shop, while they were working on someone's hair until midnight and past. not for me. besides, a weave which needs to be redone looks worse than relaxed hair which needs to be redone…………………… so much silky 'yaki, so many kinky beads.

props to any woman who can pull it off.

i'm jealous of you.

I have not seen the movie and I am not sure I want to. I just hope all black women feel compelled to make the best choice they can for themselves without worrying about what everyone else will think.

Do you ladies…do you.

Yes, I am not going to lie; I like wigs. That little picture is of me in a wig. I loved that style, and I felt comfy putting it on and taking it off. I am going to have to go online to get a wig I like because Madison, Wisconsin has some LAME wig stores; I'm sure Milwaukee has better ones. But I like wigs.

Of course, I care for the hair beneath. I oil it, comb it and brush it while in my home, but when I am out in the world, I'm another woman altogether.

Check it out.

I've worn it that way all my life. Tried the afro when I was in my teens – I looked like I could have been one of the Sylvers musical group with those two feet wide afros.

I straighten my hair because that's the way I can manage it, especially between shop visits. My opinion is you should wear your hair any damned way you want and what you're comfortable with.

I fell out when I saw white folks trying to go dreads. I think dreads are a fine art and everyone can't do dreads or 'fros either.

Get in where you fit in, with your hair and everything else in life.

I love her work, and that of her mom, Hettie Jones.

My grandma cried thinking I was going thru emotional trauma…LMAO…
In my culture, women only go bald when they are in mourning, so she was really shocked. I had to calm the old lady down….she was ready to fast and pray till eternity…lol
We usually cut our hair at the age of one as part of the culture and most of us that went to public schools were never allowed to have long hair…it had to be short and cropped…I think that is still the school rules back home.

My girlfriends went crazy, they loved that I was bold enough to pull it off but they said they cldn't.
One of them promised to go bald if Obama won the 2008 election and when I called her the day after the election she went complete amnesia on me
I wear my hair natural now with some color to it. That is the beauty of it…doing ME.

I had to keep explaining to people that I was ok, not going thru any stuff, not discovering my roots…I cldn't hide if I wanted too because my thick African accent will give it away anyway. I just missed being under the shower and having water run from my head down
I missed it, that is why I wash my hair everyday now…at least twice a day….I have learned to take care of it, it is beautiful and I am addicted to it

Cantu products are the ish….I tried Carol's but it did not work for me. Cantu's leave-in conditioner makes my hair so soft and moist that most days I don't put creme

Now I don't have to worry abt stiff neck and Indian Remi and stuff….I was the go-to girl for “what is new” in my hair days. I never wore my braids more than a month, my weaves were 2 wks at most, the only think I worry abt now is how to kill my alarm clocks in the morning…lol

I can tell you for sure that some of my caucasion friends rolled their hair in coca cola cans and slept in them to make sure their hair would be straight as possible for the next day at school.

You know what, that was in the 1966/67 era. God how can we still be talking about hair? and it is all about women…not, one male I know about thinks about the “curl/straightness” of his hair.