1971

 

Talking about old school pictures, I just had to share this one of my mum when she was 17, her Afro was perfect and up to this day she is still a natural. For a long time she did have relaxed hair then after a bad salon experience decided to BC about 4 years ago. I don't really see naturals with neat and combed out Afro's and a lot more people with twist outs, braids outs, wash and go styles etc... But I suppose back then it was part of the movement and the fashion. My mum explained that it was a bad look to have a messy Afro and that it was people's pride and joy that they took care of their Afro's with TLC.  Nowadays there seems to be a natural hair movement and more and more people are going natural and because of growing access to technology there is so much to our disposal and the world is more afro-aware; compared to 8 years ago when I went natural, it was hell because I had no idea what to do with it, how to treat it and neither did a lot of salons, so I was so clueless that once it grew long enough I relaxed it.  In late 2008 I decided to stop relaxing and started transitioning and during the transition process it was tough to maintain my curly thick new growth and my soft relaxed old hair, so I just did protective styles (braids, twist, weaves, and wigs) to stop me from BC too early. Eventually, I just decided to shave it all off December 2010, it was weird but refreshing and a new start but I loved shaving my hair so much that I did it about 4 times until August 2010. So fast forward to today September 25th 2011, my hair is about 6 inches long after a 2-3 inch trim before I put in the weave that I currently have on my head. It's the first time that I have trimmed it which is really bad, but over here London it's so tough finding a good enough salon that knows natural hairs, because just because they say they are a black salon, they don't know that using a hair dryer on that heat is not good for my hair or that using creams with mineral oils and other harmful chemicals are not good for my hair. So I got my sister to do it after she watched loads of YouTube videos and she did a really good job. I would not recommend doing it yourself because of the angles and you might end up layering your hair unintentionally.  I really need to find a salon, will probably do a review one of these days on my hunt through London.