It can’t be avoided anymore, the social networks are hot on the topic after Debra Patta put her nose in it, on her TV Show, and now sisters won’t leave the topic alone!
Respected social commentators have also joined the disscision:
”my white friends wear afro wigs at their birthday parties to DANCE and get FUNKY and SILLY. My black friends wear weaves when to go to WORK, to get MARRIED, a weave is a very SERIOUS THING…”
Lebo Mashile
But it’s not the first time that natural African hair has been in the center of a greater arguament. The Black Panther movement of the 70′s coined the phrase ”Black is Beautiful” in encouragement of sistas wearing their afros out, unironed. Icons of the time include Angela Davis and Kathleen Cleaver, women who ‘wore their hair as a crown’.
But not everybody is weave bashing now, lets not get carried away! A commentator not willing to let assumptions fly, Busisiwe Radebe, had this to say.
“As an african woman she should know being african goes way deeper than an accessory, its a soul thing! Let’s also not be shallow and minimise africanism to a mere accessory that u can wear on and off whenever u like.”
And when you look at black women making it happen without excusing their ‘blackness’ around us today, really what’s hair got to do with it?
Does the texture of our hair really have that much to do nwith how black we are? Is black and straight not as beautiful as black and kinky?
Now ya’ll know I’m no cheerleader for weaves hell until they invent ones that comb themselves and make coffee in the morning, I’m not to sure you’ll see me in that! But I’m no advocate for naturals either! I have hair that makes me cry when I comb it, I’m just waiting for warmer weather before I cut, colour and relax! But will that make me less black?
I guess black women will always have to defend themselves where beauty and blackness is concern.
Women do their hair. Lebo Mashile has dyed blond hair, and she has time to talk about ‘natural’? Show me the ‘natural blonde’ who is a black woman. Live and let live. No one will tell me that I’m beautiful. I will tell myself. No one will tell me how to be stylish. I will choose for myself. I am an African woman. I don’t need to ‘prove’ how African I am. My weave looks beautiful on my Beautiful Black African Self.
It shouldn’t have been about black women coz white women also put on weaves and they bleach and straighten their hair too. Hair struggle knows no colour so if Debra is all about investigative journalism she should’ve taken it from that angle. We all have different reasons for weaving and it’s not always about feeling inferior or embarrassed about our blackness. Debra should just ‘weave’ us to make our own choices without fear of being judged! Whether I go natural or weave is totally up to me
Her angle seems to have put all guns on us to be fair, we’re now protecting and defeding our right to choice. And as the freedoms of social media would have it, the black female has become fair game- for insults about our lack of self love and ‘trying to be white’ but when last did you hear a black woman tell a white woman with a perm or braids that she doesn’t love herself? the road, it seems, is still long for a sister with “freedom of choice”.