Black Hair Stories are BACK!
Black Hair Stories are BACK!
An original F.U.B.U. Collection series continues with Anita Baker walking right up to Karen to compliment her hair, and Yanique breaks the hair stigma by starting her freeform journey, so good!
Why do you think, as little girls, colorful hair bows were the go-to style? For one, they were a hazard, let’s be honest. You turn your head fast enough, and you have a little length that barrette is going to bring you to a halt.
Don’t get me wrong, its cute, and I love to see little girls with these hairstyles maintaining their innocence and not looking too grown. I’m old school.
Engagement Trivia Question: The first person in the comments to tell me the name of the hair barrettes below in the images will get a free submission into the magazine.
The Hair Chronicles
Los Angeles, The Jungle, January 1970.
Thank God my dad had the vision to get us out of St. Louis because California is my jam. Blue skies, sunshine, palm tree-lined streets, beaches that stretch for miles up and down the coast, mountains, desert, Hollywood, and mild weather all year round. What's not to love?
Los Angeles, April 1971 Was all about the fro:
…and of course, my six-year-old self wanted one. My mother braided my freshly washed, conditioned, and moisturized dark brown hair. After it dried over a couple of days, she picked it out. My afro was full like I was one of the Jackson Five. I thought I was so fly!
In less than twenty-four hours, my dream fro deflated. My hair, the texture of cotton, puffy, and yet baby-soft, refused to hold the shape of an afro for long. My mom is fairly conservative. I'm surprised she was willing to try the fro in the first place. She wasn't about to have me walking around looking crazy when my afro went wild. long. So that was the end of the afro era for me. It was back to a press and curl, with two little pigtails and bangs.
Westchester, California, 1976, 6th Grade Year
"Charlie's Angels", a television show, was all the rage. More specifically, the infamous Farah Fawcett feathered haircut. Everyone had the infamous poster with her golden locks and million-dollar smile. I wanted my own version of the look, only with dark brown hair, and no highlights. I didn't quite hit the same.
I didn't feel anywhere near as beautiful as Farah. I never saw myself as beautiful. Kids could be mean. I internalized the insults about my dark skin and big nose that didn't fit my petite body and small face. Other girls, never complimented my looks. I thought of myself as very average, with a big nose. That didn't stop me from trying to be cute.
I remember a teacher telling my mother, she appreciated the way she sent me and my brother to school so "neat and clean." As if, what? The other kids were dirty? Or as in, she didn't expect black kids to be so well dressed and groomed.
I was in a private Catholic school, for first and second grade. My elementary school, grades 3-6 was in Westchester, a predominantly white community near the L.A.X. (airport). When my mom and dad split, he moved to the Madrid Apartments just off Manchester and Airport Boulevard.
It was a stark contrast to where we lived with my mom. It was like a white people's single community. Very nice! The Madrid Apartments hold a significant memory because my dad taught me to swim in that pool.
In hindsight, I guess it was a little easier to live larger while your kids are in Section 8 Housing. I actually loved where we lived. There was no pool, but there were two playgrounds in the beautiful, brand-new, yellow-stucco apartment complex. We had a three-bedroom, bath and a half unit. Dad set us up there before he left like a thief in the night.
I truly loved every minute of living there. You couldn't tell me we were poor. There was always food on the table, and our apartment was spotless. The complex was like freakin' Disneyland to me. There were so many black, like me kids, I never had time to be bored, but I was that girl who could never get enough of playing and hanging out with my friends. I didn't quite know what to do with myself when I was alone with my thoughts. I had so many thoughts all the time. It was exhausting.
Los Angeles, 1977-80, Louis Pastor Junior High:
To keep my press and curl together, meant spending long Saturday afternoons at the beauty shop. It only took about an hour or so to press and curl my hair, but I spent a minimum of four hours there every other Saturday. I remember sitting at the window waiting for what seemed like forever for my mom to come pick me up after I had already been there all day. My stomach growling from hunger, my squirrely brain, bored to tears.
Black Beauty shops operate kind of like an assembly line. The beautician has anywhere between two and four clients she is working on at one time. First, you get the wash and condition, then sit under the dryer with a plastic cap over your head for 20 minutes. Next, rinse, blow dry, and sit some more until it is time for the press. Then you pray she wouldn't stop in the middle of that and make you come back to get your curl and style.
Los Angeles High School, 1980 to 1983.
My older sister became a hairstylist. Eventually, she opened her own salon in Inglewood, a more affluent black neighborhood where there were more homeowners than renters. "The Last Tangle, on north La Brea Boulevard was the place where she kept my hair looking fly even when I didn't have enough money to pay her in the days of young adulthood, after high school.
I wore a short layered Bob haircut for many years. The blow dry, light press, with a great conditioner, kept my hair bouncing and swinging in the wind.
Beverly Hills, April 6, 1990. El Torito Restaurant
It's my 25th birthday. I'm sitting with my sister Sheila at El Torito, a Mexican restaurant in Beverly Hills. We were having lunch and of course, a strawberry margarita. As we are chatting, I look across the room and notice Anita Baker having lunch with her husband. It was late afternoon and there weren't that many people in the restaurant.
Living in L.A. I was used to running into celebrities. I met Stevie Wonder on a plane, flying out of LAX to St. Louis. I met Sidney Potier going into the Forum to watch a tennis match. I lived in Studio City in my twenties, where I ran into Robin Givens at the grocery store and Angela Basset at CVS. The cast of a "Different World" was always hanging out at restaurants on Ventura Boulevard. I met Kristoff St. John at a gas station down the street from my apartment. I would always play it cool, like…they're just people, right?
I lean in and whisper to my sister, "Don't look now, but that's Anita Baker over there." We kept talking, trying to act like it was no big deal. A few minutes later, Anita gets up from her table, walks across the room towards me. She says in her sultry voice, "I love your hair girl!" I could have died right then and there! I say, "Thank you," like this is an everyday occurrence. No big deal right? My life was made! I briefly introduced her to my sister, "Meet my stylist. This is my sister Sheila." They smile and say a casual hello. Anita walks behind me going towards the restroom. I could have died!
Before my sister had come to pick me up from my real estate office, I was feeling sorry for myself all day because I didn't have any plans for my birthday. My boyfriend at the time had just moved away to go to medical school.
Inglewood, California June 4th, 1994
We got married. I was fly. So was my hair, styled by my sister, Sheila.
Glendale, California September, 1995
I became a mom, my life abruptly moved towards a completely different trajectory. It still makes me cry to think of how quickly I abandoned myself and everything about my life, including my hair, in one fell swoop.
I decided to chop my hair off.
The plan was to put my son in his stroller and pray that he would drink his bottle and go to sleep while I quietly got my hair done. Well, he wasn't that baby. If I was within his view, he wanted to be held. I decided I didn't have time to spend hours at the salon. I asked my sister to cut it close and she texturized it, making my natural curl more relaxed. After that, I found a barber who lived closer to me, and of course, learned to texturize it myself.
Yep! That's when YouTube became my Beauty School.
September 18, 1996, San Antonio Texas Big Ass, Small Town. Hated it!
I haven't been the same person since, and neither has my hair. We first moved to San Antonio, where finding black culture was like mining for gold. Talk about culture shock differences from L.A. The black population was only about seven percent and a lot of them were military. There were no big cultural festivals, music, theater or black entertainment. Finding someone to do my hair anywhere near the way my sister used to was damn near impossible.
July, 2000, Austin TX, The Lost Years
A city with eclectic diversity, culture, with the music scene being one of it's highlights. As Texas goes, this is the best place to live. It's less Texan than everywhere else. Occasionally, I would find someone who could do my hair, but my anxiety, desire for control, and perfectionism made it impossible for others to please me. I didn't have time or money to waste on someone doing a half-ass job.
I pretty much became my own hair stylist. I had observed my sister enough through the years to remember her precision with scissors. I grew impatient with waiting for my time to match up with the availability of someone else. My husband thought I was crazy, for trusting myself with clippers on the back of my head. Hair grows back if I make a mistake, which I did…often. Sometimes, I would let him fix my mistakes.
From a short afro I transitioned to two-strand twists. After observing the African woman who talked way too much, twisting my hair a couple of times, I decided I could do it myself.
From two-strand twist to 2009
Locs, 2016, 2014 2012
Eventually, I allowed my boy's barber to tighten up my shaved sides and the back of my head. I learned not to let him touch the top. He cut the top with clippers which makes it come out uneven. I know my own head better than anyone. I know the places where it dips, where the texture is different in that one spot.
To Silver Short Hair, I don't care.
Freeform: Hair that heals.
I was compelled to start my freeform locs.
It wasn’t a choice I felt like I consciously made.
It was a movement of energy that I found myself surrendering to.
I wasn’t as deeply on my spiritual path as I am now so I had very little conscious understanding of what was happening, but I knew it was something big. In fact, the last week I had my loose natural hair I went out for an art show and lunch with a friend. While I was in my car waiting for her arrival, I made a short video on my phone about the shift I felt going on inside me. I spoke about the feelings of being pulled toward freeform locing my hair and changing my diet.
Alongside my freeform journey, I also became a vegetarian first, and a month later I was a vegan.
In the video, I talked about how I had been consuming so many freeform loc videos on YouTube and how I felt a strong energetic pull to the lifestyle. I had just completed my bachelor’s degree in Screenwriting and was getting ready to enter the workforce.
It’s funny because I remember a lot of creators sharing that people would often say they got pushback from others who thought freeform locs were unprofessional or unattractive. None of that seemed to matter to me. Four days after the art show I took a shower with my loose natural hair, gave it a good shampoo and condition and left it alone. For the next nine months, I didn’t touch a comb.
The only manipulation my locs experienced was when I washed them with Dr. Bronners and poured freshly brewed rosemary water on them during wash days.
While on my freeform journey, I walked the stage for my college graduation, had a very professional job as an Executive Assistant to a Producer/ Documentarian, dated diverse and very attractive people, went to Coachella, learned to cook and nourished myself with delicious vegan foods, became a U.S. citizen, and had amazing adventures in LA. I transformed in ways I didn’t think possible and I got to know and love myself deeply.
What my freeform journey gave me was autonomy over my body and life experience. Outside voices were silenced when it came to my body and appearance and the resonance of my soul was the only sound I heard. I developed a sacred appreciation for my body from the crown of my head to the heels of my feet. Decades of personal conditioning and centuries of conditioning for the black female body were erased.
I rewired my system into something beautiful, original, and spontaneous.
Just like how my locs took shape on their own without any outside intervention so myself and psyche began to return to their natural state before they were pummeled with disempowering beliefs and ideas that had somehow embedded themselves in my DNA.
I had to give up many things to freeform. Respectability politics. People pleasing with my appearance and body. Inferiority complexes. Eurocentric beauty standards. Those among many other dysfunctional agreements had to be broken.
It’s ironic. Through letting my hair loc up in this way I unfettered myself from so many chains.
I thought I would have my freeform locs forever. Then one day nine months after the journey started it was over. I felt the pull to cut my locs and I followed it. A sweet black lady cut them off gently and I emitted gratitude for what they had brought me. I knew the journey was complete and I also knew I would never be the same.
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I loved your hair story Karen!! A black woman’s hair really is a signature of the different seasons of her life. You met so many greats while you were living in LA how amazing! Becoming hair independent out of necessity is so relatable I’ve also lived in a few places that didn’t have black stylist. Learning your hair for yourself is truly a gift. I also love the way you style your hair now ~ very chic and demure 🤌🏾
This reminds me of the famous Willie Lee Morrow (October 9, 1939 – June 22, 2022) was an American barber, businessman and inventor, who worked in the African American haircare industry. He was noted for inventing the Afro pick and developing the forerunner to the Jheri curl hairstyle. I feel like people don't give this man enough credit when it comes to black hair.