Just can't live that negative way...make way for the positive day!--Bob Marley

Human nature makes us want to express our opinions. Since the WWW rules now, blogs were created to satisfy that need in an updated way. Though i am expressive, I sometimes hold back on what I say and stick to anecdotes, expressions of adoration for people and things, and opinions on CERTAIN issues. The reason is the self-concious element of human nature. I don't want to make people mad. I don't want people to hate me because I have "out there" points of view on things, or just more adult. Young girls don't want to hear that they are most likely not in love with their boyfriends. Teens don't wanna hear that most of the time their parents are right and are looking out for them. Black people don't wanna hear that saying the "N" word is not okay, regardless of your race. People in general don't want to hear that they are insecure, or worse, BRAINWASHED. Well from now on I'm gonna be like my idols and say what I feel and EDUCATE people, not caring what they think of me for it. Starting now.

Looking around at African American females you see a common theme-either short, straight/styled hair, or long, fake hair. Why is this? It's called conditioning of the mind. When we are young we are told our hair is "nappy". It's tight, dry, kinky, hard to comb, hard to style. To me this isn't true, but in general, nappy=bad. So most of us, mainly girls, get to a certain age where our mothers take us to get something called a relaxer. For those that don't know, and trust me there's many that don't, it's a mixture of strong chemicals that is white and goopy, and smells awful, that they put in your hair to straighten in. They apply it (and it burns your scalp when it's on), wash it several times to make sure it's all out, and viola! Straight hair. So yeah it looks all nice and pretty, but you forgot one little thing-How much it weakens the hair. So back to that scenario of being a kid. For a little bit you just wear it down, but then you want styles done. So they take a curling iron and curl it up, once again, making it very pretty. That heat is especially damaging to your weak hair. After a while of curling it along with blowdrying it, you start to get breakage. Your hair falls out. It's not a drastic falling out, but everytime you comb your hair, tons of little pieces break off. This keeps happening and eventually your hair gets uneven. By that time you have new growth but it is "nappy", so you go to get another relaxer and the process keeps repeating. Your hair continues to break and get shorter. Essentially you have 3 options: 1) Braid it up and leave it alone for it to recover (what I always did) 2) Leave it super short or 3) Get fake hair. Most go with option 3. I don't know much about weaves and extentions 'cause I never had them, but I know I will never get it in my hair. Since your hair is so badly damaged, you put some fake hair to cover it up so it looks nice again. That's fine, but I'm just not into that fake stuff. The million dollar question is--Why not just leave it natural? We come back to conditioning. We are taught that our hair, black hair, does not look nice unless it is straight. Of course that's not true, I mean there's afros, afro puffs (which I'm rockin' right now) braids, dreads (SEXAY! lol), twists, etc., all which look very pretty. Other people simply don't want to deal with it because it is time-consuming. But it's mostly the first reason. Why does our hair have to be "bad" just because it's nappy? It's how we were born. Different nationalities have different textures of hair, but we do the most stuff to ours to try to make it look as unnatural as possible. Sure people dye their hair, use hairspray and gel, and use other items to make it straight or curly, but none but us go as far as to put chemicals used in Drano into their hair in effort to make it do what they want it to do. We MAKE FUN of fellow blacks for having nappy hair. Most are afraid to wear their hair natural because they might get made fun of, or it might look ugly. Why does natural black hair have to be ugly or bad? People are always preaching about black power, but how about this issue? It's borderline self-racist, being unproud of your natural hair. I am fortunate to have realized all this at the young age of 14. That is why I don't use heat and chemicals in my hair, and it still looks nice. I'm proud of my natural hair, it's the way it was intended to be. This is an example of what "Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery" means.

Not to be an ad or anything, but I think anything that I can't tell you, this man can. Go to www.black-hairstyles-truth.com where you will find some info and buy a book by an awesome guy named Kamau Kenyatta who I happen to know personally. Lives right down the road from me. Good-looking too. ANYWAY, go there if you want an even more in-depth explanation of this issue, and because, like I said, he's an awesome guy, and an inspiration to me.