Your Natural Hair Is Your Pride: African Women Worldwide Must Reject Artificial Hair
December 16, 2020 707
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There
is no woman in the world that patronizes foreign hair more than the African and
African-Diaspora woman. Over the century, our women have been made to believe
that their hair is not beautiful enough.
9
out of 10 African women between the age of 15 and 60, cannot go a month without
wearing artificial hair. 99% of the time, these hair extensions look nothing
like the beautiful and wooly African curls and Afro. What is more depressing is
that little girls, below the age of 10, are made to wear these ridiculous
foreign (fake hair).
At that tender age, they are told they are not beautiful enough with their natural
hair. From that point, doubt is created in the mind of the African girl-child –
a doubt that would haunt her forever.
When
our women are not wearing and fixing these artificial hairs, they are using
relaxers and all sorts of chemicals to straighten their hair out, to make it
look European, Indian, or Asian. To make it look anything, but African.
So,
the real questions we should be asking ourselves are: How did our women lose so
much confidence in their hair? What medium was employed to actualize this brainwashing? What can be done to restore the confidence of the African woman in her
hair?
The
use of wigs by women in the world, especially the west, can be traced back to
the 17th century. It was a late trend. Hair weaves grew popular
and gathered interest in the 1950s. And they were basically used by celebrities
and people in the entertainment industry.
Today, most human hair weaves come from Asian
countries like India and China. Most of the human hair comes from Hindu temples
in India, where women donate their hair for religious practices. It is later
combed, cleaned and re-dyed, and exported for international consumption.
It
is safe to conclude that the major medium of this brainwash of our women, is
the entertainment industry. For decades, through movies, songs, and TV adverts,
our women have been programmed to see their hair as trash, and hair extensions
as true beauty. Also, another major influence on our women is the pair and societal
pressure.
It
will surprise you to know that may African women would start a fight with their
husbands or partners, when they are not provided money to buy these foreign
synthetic or human hair extensions.
It
will also shock you to find out how many of our young girls would sleep
around just to afford money for a human hair worth $100-$500. When they can
grow their natural hair and still look amazingly beautiful in them.
They
call it looking beautiful. But we at Liberty Writers Africa, calls it looking
really unaware and shallow.
Asides
the insult on the beauty of the African woman’s natural beauty, one major
negative effect of these extensions, glues, and relaxers (chemicals) is the loss
of hair. It has been reported by the Johns Hopkins University School of
Medicine that the African woman makes up 1/3 of women suffering from Traction
alopecia, as a result of weaves, wigs, and hair extensions.
African countries like
Liberia has placed a ban on foreign hair extensions. The Ministry of Finance in
Liberia, in the October of 2018, disclosed a decision
to enforce a 2014 policy that bars female employees from wearing colored hair
extensions or dying their hair. This is a welcomed development
that we wish for other African countries to adopt.
Governments and civil
societies have to get involved in the orientation of our women as regards the
beauty in carrying their natural hair.
The African man must play a part in resurrecting the confidence of the African woman in her hair. Our women are beautiful, and we must make them see it. We must tell them how we don’t really fancy them in other women’s hair.