It's Never "Just Hair" For Girls Like Us.

The Living Nightmare of Relaxers on a Black Woman

This is an excerpt from the 2nd chapter of my memoir, Loving Her Reflection. The name of this chapter is “Losing Ground”. You can read a full introduction to my book and find more excerpts here.

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In the emotional desert of my family home, a lively conversation with my new friend was like a burst of color in a world of grey. So, I asked Latavia if she would like to speak over the phone, and we carved out space to chat later that night.

Our first conversation was chill and friendly. We talked about how we had spent the Christmas holiday, and what we had been up to that year.

I liked her voice. The effects of testosterone were very much apparent, bringing a deeper tone and gentle raspiness to her voice. But there was also a smoothness…a feminine quality that was expressed, partially through her diction, as well as her vocal undertones.

While I wondered what she used to sound like, I appreciated the androgyny of her voice, and it seemed like she had settled into it pretty well.

Between her voice and personality, she reminded me a lot of Stephan—the silky loverboy that Steve Urkel used to transform into through his Transformation Chamber.

Looking back, it’s ironic that she reminded me so much of a character that represented Steve’s desire to be someone that he’s not: a cooler, sleeker, more traditionally masculine archetype of himself. Based on what else I would learn about Latavia, I don’t think that was a coincidence.

One day, around the time we had started making plans to see each other, I saw that Latavia had posted a photo of herself with a brand new hairstyle: a blunt, chemically straightened, shoulder-length bob.

Whaaa….She got a relaxer?!?!

She had transformed her beautiful, healthy, afro-textured cornrows into a swishy-swish mop, which she smugly flipped around like Farrah Fawcett.

My heart sank. This was shocking and alarming, on various levels.

I’ve actually written a memoir about my own hair journey, which included many painful years of relaxers before I reached a place where I was ready to love myself and embrace my natural hair.

In my early loc’d years, I would often have vivid nightmares about being forced to cut my locs and relax my hair. In some dreams, the perm would happen while I was unconscious, prompting a confused grief when I discovered that my locs had been replaced with relaxed hair. Even recently, 15 years later, I’ve experienced such dreams.

So, the fact that she actually did it with what seemed like no deliberation, was like witnessing a living nightmare.

I wondered what would compel her to move backwards.

While I am not against black women experimenting with an occasional straight style, I feel that our natural texture should be our default. Personally, I think we look best with our god-given texture, despite the media saying otherwise.

I am also vehemently against hair relaxers, as they are severely damaging to our hair and have even been known to cause womb-related cancers.

As we speak, lawyers are advertising to black women on social media, encouraging us to hire them for personal injury lawsuits as a result of relaxers.

Women who relax their hair are participating in an act of self-hatred. It is worth learning to embrace ourselves the way we were born, even if it is challenging.

So when I saw that Latavia had relaxed her hair, it was big red flag. I would later find out exactly what had motivated her decision, but in the moment I was confused, and it raised many questions:

Was she straightening her hair to appear more feminine? What did this say about her relationship to her natural texture—or mine for that matter—and what on Earth possessed her to destroy her natural tresses like so?

But because I was genuinely interested in her as a whole human being, I removed judgment and embraced her exactly where she was at. Healing is not linear. She was clearly going through a major life transition, and this was part of it. When I put on my documentarian’s hat, it simply made me more curious to hear her story.

That is the problem when you meet someone with no intention to date, and that person sweeps you up into a romance you did not initially want or expect:

You do not have time to consider whether that person is relationship material, because you are not looking at them through that lens. You slipped and fell into a lovers dynamic, rather than consciously stepping into it with your eyes wide open. That was the case with me.

But Latavia must have sensed what kind of woman I like, or what kind of woman I am—because she definitely used a lot of her masculine energy to attract me, despite carrying some feminine elements in her fashion sense.

While I wasn’t initially attracted to Latavia, that Stephan energy was ultimately what turned me onto her.

But she was becoming a little too forward with me, and it was kind of creepy. She would have to temper her fire to get me to warm up.