I am not my hair
I am not this skin
I am not your expectations no no
I am not my hair
I ma not this skin
I am a soul that lives within - India Arie

I admire ladies who carry their natural hair and can cope with the styling nightmare it is. I know 'cos I carried it throughout my childhood and cried most times my hair was made. I admire dreadlock-wearing ladies and the amount of time they invest in keeping it locked. Not for me; too boring.

Sometimes I see some really cool hair extensions and wish I could wear them but I know I can't cope with the hours of pruning and preening. My definition of styling is packing my braids with a rubber band and jumping right into the day

In my usual way of discovering stuff late, I stumbled on a documentary about the Indian hair industry and it got me thinking; how far is too far, really?
I remember the story a friend told of a lady in a salon where she was making her hair. The lady had bought some brazilian hair and lace wig on credit and had been dodging the seller she bought it from for a while. The seller got wind of her whereabout and came down to the salon. Within minutes, buttons popped out and various colours of underwear were revealed. The story ended with the weave buyer on her knees, begging for time to sell her Blackberry Torch to pay back some of the money.


I also read a true life narrative of a lady who got herself some indian hair, fixed it and started having nightmares. Nothing too life threatening, just a hysterical indian woman chasing her about asking to have her hair back. Seriously

There's no need to talk about the media and the way popular culture has fuelled fickleness especially among young people; we all know these things. Or how in keeping up with the Jones' we equate status and self worth with possessing anything 'the cool kids' have.

Though I wear hair extensions I never use them more than once so I know paying so much for them won't make sense. But even when I think, 'Oh this really looks nice, maybe I should...' I cant help but remember the 10.3 million northern kids currently out of school. Call me penny-pinching but in the light of that very depressing statistics, it seems almost wicked to be carrying the school fees of 10 children on my head.

If you like go kinky, or wear them dreads, or buy Lolita and all those Noble hair products that shine like a bunch of new kitchen knives. It's not in my place to prescribe or benchmark. But maybe you should watch the video (Here's the link http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=21SoSN1GiWg) and really ask yourself: at what cost must you look beautiful?

©Naomi Lucas
http://naomilucas..com/2013/04/i-am-not-my-hair.html