Beauty

Every since Sunday I haven't stopped thinking about Soul Food dinner and things that Dick Gregory said. In particular, there was a comment made about the black persons hair. How it is naturally "natty" and how people have died from the bleach used to color it. I can tell anyone who asked why Blacks spend so much time changing their hair (society has feed them messages about what pretty hair looks like) from an educated point of view. But I still don't fully understand why my generation does take a stronger stand and change the image of beautiful hair. For me, it wasn't until recently that I learn what natural black hair looked like. I, and many other Whites, thought that the straighted look was natural because that is all I saw. I didn't even see natural black hair until my later years of high school. How are Whites supposed to change what they see as beautiful hair if they don't see anything but the chemically changed hair. Personal, when I first saw natural Black hair I thought how beautiful it was. I'm not trying to say that all Black people should wear their hair naturally, many Whites change their hair in similar ways whether it's because they think their hair is "not pretty" or whether it's because they feel their natural hair is "not tamable."

At this point, I feel that the reasons to change one's hair is a fashionable thing and nothing more. Meaning for many the core reasons are unknown. I'm not trying to say that there aren't many cases where Blacks have heard negative comments made about their hair and I know that everything I have said is a lot easier to say than it is to take action on. I guess I just wish that Blacks could stop feeling the pressure to change their hair and wear it the way they want to, not the way society has told them to wear their hair.

All this makes me think of comments that have been made about my own hair. Apparently I have the blond hair that so many people try to create, so I should never tie my hair. I've also had comments made about the way my hair is naturally wavy and that others wish they too had wavy hair. While Blacks are given complements on how beautiful their hair when they change it, I get compliments when I don't. I feel pressure not to change my hair.

This whole hair thing is just one example about what is considered beautiful and what is not. I wish that the standards of beauty could be easily change, but I know how hard it is to change it. The standard of beauty is always changing, it just takes a very long time