prior before the release of Adichie's Novel, AMERICANAH, i lived comfortably with my permed hair and weavons. Not that it has changed but am beginning to celebrate the beauty of African natural textured hair because just like to most of my thainking, Adichie just puts a word in the missing gaps in my my unexpressed ideals . Hair, the glory of a woman.
The hair of the African woman is usually
a think mass of curled strong hair, kinky, and most times unable to effectively achieve the Western pony tail style but of-course, there are so many other styles that can be beautifully achieved by them also.
a think mass of curled strong hair, kinky, and most times unable to effectively achieve the Western pony tail style but of-course, there are so many other styles that can be beautifully achieved by them also.
Among-st many of the stigmatization attached to being black, hair plays a very vital role to how the woman sees herself and how the world sees her in this century. The African woman's hair most times is regarded as unprofessional due to its inability to stay straightened like the westerns. In some certain ways this have affected the way they view themselves; their self-acceptance,it has also created insecurities in the woman and so she's constantly out looking for products that will help her hair be as straightened as the mainstream definition of beauty.
Despite the beauty of networking and globalization, it comes with its baggage. so that the feminine beauty becomes "the socially constructed notion that physical attractiveness is one of women's most important assets, and something all women should strive to achieve and maintain. Feminine beauty ideals have always been prevalent, in every culture, in every society, and in every time period. Women conform to beauty norms to fit into the crowd and to simultaneously show themselves off as being desirable.[2]"
This idea of beauty is what the media spread. This lady's hair is very beautiful but this isn't all there is to being beautiful as a woman. so even though the media is absolutely correct of this being beautiful, it simply is incomplete and many stories matters. This idea is spread so much so that the woman who desires to wear her natural hair sees it as unbearable. The media wields a lot of power and must attempt to give full and complete story. in Malcolm X words "The media is the most powerful entity on earth. they have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent and that is power because they control the minds of the masses."
Dare to question as many things as possible that you feel uncomfortable with because with the right questions your world view will change and help so many others do same. who would have imagined that Adichie will talk about something as "Trivial" as hair? but hair has political intonations. In an interview with Synne Rifbjerg, she said "If Michelle Obama had had natural hair, Barak would not have won the election". This is very saddening and may seem shallow but it is true because a lot of notion is attached to black hair especially by Americans. So that if she had had dreadlocks or Afro or cornrows,she may have been construed as radical, or called a black panther.
As a result of the hair question adichie raised a lot of Africans are enjoying their natural hair, producing natural hair care products and feeling beautiful and comfortable which is very important to the woman.Beauty for the woman must necessary be felt.
Because Mary Mitchel Slessor dared to ask her uncomfortable question in Calabar many years ago, challenging cultural believes and defiling traditions, Jamie, Alice, Maggie and May, these set of twins have been given a second chance to live with many others.
I will end with this very insightful quote-“Stop worrying about your identity and concern yourself with the people you care about, ideas that matter to you, beliefs you can stand by, tickets you can run on. Intelligent humans make those choices with their brain and hearts and they make them alone. The world does not deliver meaning to you. You have to make it meaningful...and decide what you want and need and must do. It’s a tough, unimaginably lonely and complicated way to be in the world. But that’s the deal: you have to live; you can’t live by slogans, dead ideas, clichés, or national flags. Finding an identity is easy. It’s the easy way out.”
