Self-esteem: A work in progress.

I had a thought-provoking experience today.

I met our representative for the Miss World pageant at the airport today. She was leaving for Beijing and I was dropping off some product she had ordered. I spotted her immediately - tall (the 4-inch platforms certainly contributed), lean, gorgeous, pale, with hair and legs for days. I was really struck by her beauty, and felt proud to know that we'd definitely be able to hold our own in the looks department of that competition.

Then it hit me - I was shocked! It had been so long since I had compared myself to another that at first I didn't realise what was happening. As I walked back to the car I felt short, dumpy, and unattractive. I thought my hair looked extra frizzy (my bad hair day wasn't helping the situation either) and I admit that I spent a moment or two wondering why I missed out on receiving the kind of genetic lottery jackpout payout that our beauty queen enjoyed.

When it all goes horribly wrong.

So guys,

I know I just wrote this morning about how I love my hair and it's so awesome, etc. Well, I lied. It's terrible. I'm exasperated.

Bad hair days happen to naturals too. When my hair was straight, a quick fix for a hair disaster was never more than a scrunchie away. Now that my hair is free to do its thing, however, without careful supervision it can run wild.

Hair

One of the main things I'll be talking about on this blog is my hair. I've had an extremely tumultuous relationship with my hair over the years, as I think many black girls have. We are conditioned to believe that natural hair is unruly, unmanageable, unkempt. We focus on the 'un', and try to 'correct' our hair using various processes. I've worn my hair in almost every conceivable way; straight, jheri-curl (let your SOUL GLOW!), braids, texturized. The only reason I have never installed a weave is because I just couldn't bring myself to spend so much money on mere hair.

Hello World!

I often find myself awake at odd hours of the night browsing natural hair blogs, contemplating new shades of eyeshadow, or combining the contents of my wardrobe in new, sometimes shocking ways. I figured I might as well make this time a bit more fruitful and explore my obsessions in productive ways.