Hair Politics

http://www.bellanaija.com/2013/04/18/long-or-short-straight-or-curl-hair-is-personal/



With India Arie's song I am not my hair......and Chris Rock's documentary on weaves, both worlds are often at conflict with each other, where the one group feels the other is hating on them.

Could this be a bigger phenomenon than hair, where the one "proudly" African group tends to accuse the other of not loving thyself. Pretty much like religion, where anything different is wrong?

I have relaxed my hair for as long as I remember. I recently had an attempt at growing my hair natural but I figured I don't have the patience for it. I love natural hair, and think it looks beautiful. However, I find growing it to be quite a mission, and this is my only challenge with natural hair.

My gripe, however, when it comes to hair is that there seems to be war between the naturalists and the relaxers/weave-wearing woman. At the risk of

 

sounding diplomatic, I reckon (and this is my personal position) that beauty in all its forms is about how you feel about yourself. So, if you feel beautiful in your natural hair, great, and if weave or relaxed hair does it for you, also great.

The issue here, should be celebrating beauty in its different forms. There is no standard definition of beauty, so let's celebrate it in whatever colour, texture or shape in comes.

Here's to woman and her beautiful self.
Lady B!

Love & Pain - Two sides of the same coin

So, the news making headlines of late is how a 21 year old woman in Soweto is to appear in court after cutting her man's genitalia after she caught him cheating with another woman. As to what are the mechanics of the action, and how humanly possible could the man have stood and watched her cut his 'tool' off is another thing. However my issue is to whether or not she did this out of love, anger or obsession. For purposes of this article; let's say she did it out f love.

Now, this has really got me thinking about the things we do for love.  We stick around in toxic relationships in the name of love; we stay in abusive relationships we claim to love the people we are with, or are under the illusion that they love us.

How many of us have been pushed to the edge to do something that was out of character out of love?  How many of us have compromised ourselves in the name of love? How many of us have continually hidden things away from our partners or done things which we knew very well would hurt our partners were they to find out about them? So then this bags the question; is love and pain one thing? Are they two sides of the same coin, that one can not exist without the other? Given the above scenario; and based on personal experience and observation, I'm inclined to believe that it does. As to which gives birth to the other; love or pain, is an issue for debate.

 

Lady B!