The Art of being a black woman with natural hair. What is true beauty? www.gafra.org or www.gafra-art.org

This photo shows me in the days when I had relaxed hair. It was great and especially when I travelled. I don't know what it is about cold weather but my hair loved it. It flowed and was bouncy and I looked amazing. I used a curling iron to set my hair as I really couldn't handle having curlers in my hair. Firstly, I couldn't sleep like that and secondly I hated having anything on my head.

That's why I never wore wigs or went the way of weaves etc. my head couldn't handle the heat. Yes my hair looked great and I was proud of it. The only issue was sometimes my hair didn't style the way I wanted. The curling Iron didn't seem to keep the curls long enough and my hair was very thin so although it fell nicely it was very light and the style didn't keep.

So that takes me to the 6 reasons relaxed hair isn't always the best style for you:

Too many Chemicals

2. Relaxing Thins the Hair

3. Breakage

4. Slow Hair Growth

5. Inability to Style

6. Very costly

1. TOO MANY CHEMICALS

Relaxing places a lot of stress on your hair follicles via the chemicals being used every 3 or 6 months depending on how often you relax. When I first started straightening/relaxing my hair I did it every 6 months. I had a jerry curl so I had to cut it short then start the relaxing process. But after a few years I relaxed every 3 months then every 1-2 months. The more often I relaxed my hair the lighter it got. I was encouraged to do deep conditioning, which I did but I didn't see any real improvement because of them.

2. RELAXING THINS THE HAIR

As I mentioned above my hair got thinner as the years passed and I had started relaxing my hair from the age of 16. By the time I was 46 my hair lacked body and it was difficult to keep the curls or the bounce.

3. BREAKAGE

My hair had a lot of breakage and even though I deep conditioned as much as I could nothing changed. So my bathroom was continuously covered with bits of hair on the floor. Whenever you combed your hair there were strands everywhere. it was worrying and a bit annoying.

So that takes me to the 6 reasons relaxed hair isn't always the best style for you:

Too Many Chemicals

2. Relaxing Thins the Hair

3. Breakage

4. Slow Hair Growth

5. Inability to Style

6. Very costly

1. TOO MANY CHEMICALS

2. RELAXING THINS THE HAIR

3. BREAKAGE

4. SLOW HAIR GROWTH

My hair refused to grow. To make it worst every time I went to do a relaxer my hairdresser needed to trim the ends and once she did that my hair stayed that length until 2 months later when I went back for my touch up. So my hair stayed short and thin. I dispaired because a woman's hair is her beauty. It's what makes us feel good about ourselves. I builds our confidence. A bad hair day for a woman is a really bad start to her day.

5. INABILITY TO STYLE

With the thin hair, split ends and breakage, my hair didn't style as I wanted so I was continuously putting it in a bun. That is not a good look for me. I liked my hair open and flowing. This look was no fun and quite boring, but when I styled it in the morning within 30minutes of stepping outside on my way to work my hair went limp and looked messy. Not a good look for a Business Consultant. This was not a good thing for me.

6. COSTLY

Last but not least relaxing is very expensive. I live in the Caribbean and our climate can be very humid and dry. So your relaxed hair draws in the moisture and gets very flat. To relax my hair cost USD $100 and that lasted 1-2 months so I was spending USD $600 per year. That seems not so bad to you but in Trinidad you multiply that by 7 as our conversion is $7.00TTD to $1.00USD. So every year I was spending TTD$4200.00. Then my daughters also had relaxed hair and you know who had to pay for theIr hair? Me of course, so that's USD$600 by 3 women/girls. USD$1800.00 = TTD$12,600.00 a year. What do I spend now to do my hair?.....hmmmmm NOTHING!!!. My hair products costs TTD$700 or USD$100 and they last me the entire year or more.

So relaxing wasn’t necessarily the best style for me but it was all I knew and what I grew up with. It started with my mother and I continued the same process. We are never really encouraged to keep our natural hair or taught how to maintain and comb our hair to place it in styles that we enjoy. Instead we were taught that our hair was too unmanageable and relaxing was the best way to manage it. I can't really blame my mom. There weren't many products around at that time to help them and they didn't have the time to do research so they did what was popular and easy.