De­siree See­baran

Solange Knowles is do­ing it. Raven Symone is do­ing it. Ali­cia Keys, Vi­o­la Davis, Heather Headley, Lil Ma­ma, Tracee El­lis Ross, Nicole Ari Park­er... the list of in­ter­na­tion­al black fe­male celebri­ties who have em­braced their nat­ur­al hair is get­ting longer every day. And here in Trinidad and To­ba­go and the di­as­po­ra, or­di­nary women-stu­dents, house­wives and cor­po­rate pro­fes­sion­als-are al­so throw­ing out the re­lax­er kits and hot combs and learn­ing to style and care for the hair that grows out of their heads, for dif­fer­ent rea­sons. Mem­bers of a group on Face­book called Caribbean Peo­ple With Nat­ur­al Hair had plen­ty to say about why they've done away with chem­i­cal straight­en­ers. "I was fed up of the burns," said Leeanne of re­lax­ers. "Then there was the wast­ed time at the sa­lon. Plus I have a pic­ture of my­self at about sev­en or eight years old with my hair in two big puffs. I loved and missed that and it mo­ti­vat­ed me to go back nat­ur­al." PhD stu­dent Marielle mi­grat­ed to the US to get a doc­tor­ate and couldn't af­ford to go to a hair­dress­er every two months on a stu­dent's bud­get. She tried re­lax­ing on her own un­til dis­as­ter struck. "My Chi­nese room­mate was bug­ging me for some­thing when I was re­lax­ing my hair and couldn't quite un­der­stand why I could not take a break in the mid­dle of it to at­tend to the is­sue. One side of my hair end­ed up drop­ping com­plete­ly out!" Af­ter braid­ing her hair for a cou­ple more months, Bar­row start­ed wear­ing her hair in Afro-puffs and twists and hasn't looked back.

Shef­fern's rea­son is more iden­ti­ty-based: "My hair was re­laxed from the time I was sev­en years old up un­til 2010. I got a lot of neg­a­tive com­ments from peo­ple around who want­ed to know why I would cut off my 'nice long straight hair. My phi­los­o­phy was that I was leav­ing Eu­rope and go­ing back to Africa. This is the hair I was born with." The term "go­ing nat­ur­al" is pe­cu­liar to black women for a num­ber of rea­sons. Black hair is usu­al­ly much curli­er, kinki­er and frizzi­er than Cau­casian, Asian or In­di­an hair types; it's al­so much more frag­ile. When African peo­ple were en­slaved, they were forced to give up not on­ly their free­dom, re­li­gions, fam­i­lies and homes, but they were al­so forced to cov­er their hair with wigs if they served as house slaves, or cloth if they worked in the fields. Even­tu­al­ly, black women be­gan to see their own hair as wrong or bad be­cause of racial con­di­tion­ing and be­gan to straight­en it with heat to make it look more like Cau­casian hair. Re­lax­ers made the straight­en­ing process eas­i­er and last longer. Fast for­ward to the 21st cen­tu­ry, when straight hair among black women is seen as a rite of pas­sage, a sig­nal that you have grown up. Cor­po­rate women dared not wear their hair kinky; adult women had no idea how to comb or style their daugh­ters' hair. But things are def­i­nite­ly start­ing to change.

A rev­o­lu­tion

"It's a rev­o­lu­tion. Black peo­ple are re­al­ly em­brac­ing their hair," said Al­li­son God­dard. She's the own­er of Body Beau­ti­ful on D Av­enue, a beau­ty sup­ply store that caters ex­clu­sive­ly to nat­ur­al hair and body care. A for­mer cor­po­rate pro­fes­sion­al, many of God­dard's clients have high-pow­ered jobs and lifestyles but have tak­en the nat­ur­al plunge. "And the prod­ucts that we have now make it eas­i­er for women to go nat­ur­al and still look pro­fes­sion­al." Chris Rock's ground­break­ing doc­u­men­tary Good Hair showed that not on­ly is the black hair­care in­dus­try gob­bling up pots of mon­ey from the African-Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ty, but al­so that the chem­i­cals that are used may be re­al­ly harm­ful to women. God­dard is es­pe­cial­ly sen­si­tive to this is­sue. Her store spe­cialis­es in prod­ucts with­out chem­i­cals like parabens, sul­phates and min­er­al oils which fea­ture as in­gre­di­ents in hun­dreds of more main­stream hair­care prod­ucts. Sul­phates and min­er­al oils have been found to cause ex­ces­sive hair and skin dry­ness and this can be a death sen­tence to black hair, which is al­ready prone to dry­ness and break­age. But parabens can be even more dead­ly. "Your body reads parabens as es­tro­gen, and that can put you at fur­ther risk for can­cers that are sen­si­tive to es­tro­gen, like breast can­cer," God­dard ex­plained. "A lot of peo­ple need to be ed­u­cat­ed about the right way to treat your hair and they need to read la­bels, be­cause we are putting a lot of things in their hair that aren't good for them."

Oth­er 'nat­u­rals' are all about go­ing nat­ur­al as a way of life. Ruth Abrams is a Suri­namese psy­chol­o­gist who has worked in Trinidad for sev­en years. She's nev­er put chem­i­cals in her hair, but when she moved here and start­ed go­ing to hair­dressers who claimed to be able to style her thick, long tress­es, she found that many of them had no idea that kinky hair need­ed to be combed gen­tly. Sev­er­al hair­dressers tried to con­vince her to let them 'soft­en' her hair with heat or chem­i­cals. Abrams was hav­ing none of it, so she cares her hair her­self with a liq­uid or­gan­ic soap and pure cas­tor oil. Now, she's or­gan­ised a se­ries of work­shops on how to take care of nat­ur­al hair, called Nat­ur­al Hair 101, sched­uled for Oc­to­ber 21 to 23, 2012 in St Clair, Port-of-Spain. The work­shop leader is Do­minique Snip, own­er of Shea­do, a line of or­gan­ic hair prod­ucts made from shea but­ter. The reg­is­tra­tion fee is $75; Abrams says that she's not hold­ing this work­shop for the mon­ey. "It is not a mon­ey-mak­ing busi­ness, but as a psy­chol­o­gist, my in­ter­est is for peo­ple's holis­tic well-be­ings. We are many gen­er­a­tions af­ter slav­ery and still there are many black peo­ple who feel that your hair is hard, that it's not man­age­able," Abrams ex­plained. "Your hair is man­age­able. Every­thing that God gave you is man­age­able and good."

Black women spend big $$ on hair

Women–and black women in par­tic­u­lar–spend big mon­ey on their hair. So it's on­ly nat­ur­al that a nat­ur­al hair care in­dus­try would spring up in this en­vi­ron­ment of open­ness and knowl­edge about nat­ur­al black hair. Lisa Mar­tin is the co-own­er of Val­rosa Ltd, an­oth­er Port-of-Spain-based beau­ty store that caters to women with nat­u­ral­ly kinky hair. "It was nev­er in­tend­ed to be a curly nat­ur­al hair store; it just evolved that way," she ex­plained. She and her sis­ter start­ed off as the dis­trib­u­tors for a hair care line for re­laxed hair. When that didn't work out, they start­ed to dis­trib­ute Mixed Chicks, a wild­ly pop­u­lar in­ter­na­tion­al hair care line for women with curly hair. As new­bie nat­u­rals, they had tried the line them­selves and loved it. "As the busi­ness grew, we de­cid­ed to open a store. But peo­ple with kinki­er hair kept say­ing, 'What about our hair tex­ture?'" These days, Mar­tin and her sis­ter car­ry non-chem­i­cal brands like Un­cle Funky's Daugh­ter, for­mu­lat­ed specif­i­cal­ly for curly and kinky hair types. They do hair demos with prospec­tive cus­tomers. And the de­mand for prod­ucts to help with nat­ur­al hair care is steadi­ly in­creas­ing. "I will not be a mil­lion­aire to­mor­row. But there is def­i­nite­ly a grow­ing trend to­wards nat­ur­al hair," Mar­tin said. "Some peo­ple are here dai­ly. So many peo­ple are tran­si­tion­ing (from re­laxed to nat­ur­al hair), peo­ple bring their kids here when they can't man­age their hair. The busi­ness is promis­ing, I'll say that."

God­dard agrees. "I start­ed my shop with three lines of prod­ucts, now I have about 12," she ex­plained. With brands like Kinky Curly and Ja­maican Black Cas­tor oil, God­dard's store has be­come a sort of Mec­ca for women ea­ger to learn how to style their hair. She's even talk­ing about open­ing a sa­lon at the back of her shop. "I'm about to take my busi­ness to the next lev­el where I'm go­ing to start sup­ply­ing hair­dressers." And some lo­cal women are even dab­bling in mak­ing their own hair prod­ucts. Thanks to nat­ur­al hair blog­gers like Kim­may­Tube and Nap­tur­al85, blend­ing home­made elixirs with in­gre­di­ents like shea but­ter, greek yo­gurt and pure or­gan­ic oils is the new trend. And one woman has tak­en it even fur­ther. Twen­ty-four-year-old Nolana Lynch owns Eco-Truf­fles Lav­ish Body Treats, a line of nat­ur­al, or­gan­ic hair and body prod­ucts. Af­ter go­ing nat­ur­al her­self, Lynch re­alised that if she want­ed to use on­ly or­gan­ic and nat­ur­al prod­ucts, she had to im­port them. And when she spoke to sis­ter nat­u­rals, she re­alised that there was a more of a mar­ket for these prod­ucts than just her. Or­gan­ic rose­mary and co­conut oil, nat­ur­al cleans­ing clays, co­coa, al­monds and mel­on are just some of the in­gre­di­ents that make up Lynch's prod­uct line.

Why go to all the time and trou­ble to use more ex­pen­sive or­gan­ic prod­ucts when for gen­er­a­tions black moth­ers main­tained their daugh­ters' hair with sham­poo and min­er­al oil? "Be­cause this time we want to do it right," Lynch ar­gued. "I don't re­call see­ing that many black women with long flow­ing nat­ur­al hair in my child­hood. I know that it can be done; and I want to prove that it can be done with the right hair care prac­tices." One thing is clear: the shift to­ward black nat­ur­al hair is more than just a fad. "I know how it feels to have 'bad hair' as a teenag­er grow­ing up," Mar­tin said. "But I see so many peo­ple em­brac­ing their nat­ur­al hair. And it is amaz­ing what nat­ur­al prod­ucts can do. And it's not be­cause I'm sell­ing it, but I have my hand in peo­ple's hair all day. There are so many things you could do!"