Before and After Part III

by curlytrainer 25th November 2009, 11:34 pm

Notice anything strange about my hair in this picture? Yes it is lopsided. It's big and poofy on my left side and flat on my right side. Just as Salt (or was it Pepa?) described in the movie "Good Hair", that lopsided look happened accidentally. In my efforts to tame my BAA (or Big Ass Afro - as seen in my Before and After Part II entry), I had a texturizer put in it. On a whim, without doing any prior research, I decided the BAA had to go. So I went to the local JCPenney salon and asked a stylist I had never seen before to put a texturizer in it. I thought I did my due diligence when I asked her if she had ever done a texturizer before and she said yes. Well apparently she was lying because she commenced to parting my hair in two halves, left and right, applying relaxer to the right side, and 30 minutes later when she was done working it through that side, she applied relaxer to the left side. Then she rinsed it all out. Well if you do your math you'll realize that the right side of my head had 30 minutes more exposure to relaxer than the left. And there you have it: the Salt-n-Pepa look.

I continued getting texturizers for the next 2 or 3 years. Somehow, though, I kept going back to the thought that maybe I was like in grade school - wanting to be like everyone else around me. Why did I hate my hair so much? Why wouldn't my hair grow down instead of up? Why should it have to grow down if it didn't want to? It's hard standing out in a crowd, and I wasn't quite ready at that time to let my BAA stand out. When I got tired of all this, I did my second BC.

Before and After Part III 2nd_bc13

Smiling much bigger in this one cuz I'm happy to be nappy again. That was the wash and go, but my normal style was the twist for a few days...

Before and After Part III Short_10

Followed by the take down...

Before and After Part III Short_11

During that time I transitioned professionally from business analyst to personal trainer. I found that natural hair made a lot more sense for my lifestyle than relaxers. I wasn't fighting against what my hair wanted to do all the time. If my head sweated during a workout, who cares? If it rained or was humid, which it often was, who cares? I was washing my hair about once every 7-10 days. I started using Kinky Curly Curling Custard and Knot Today, which I immediately loved. They made a huge difference in my hair's moisture levels. The discovery of the products and ways to style my hair meant I didn't have to deal with an unkempt, dry sponge of an afro like you see in my "Before and After Part II". Now don't get me wrong, I have now come to appreciate the BAA as being yet another way to wear my natural short hair. I had options. That was the great thing about this whole experiment. I began to love my hair for what it was, learn to care for it, and appreciate it in all of its manifestations. This was me. Take it or leave it.

Stay tuned tomorrow for Part IV - Straight again???