![]() Between the time it took to style her hair and her inability to achieve a style she felt comfortable wearing, she says it just wasn’t working for her. Judith Jarrett, 58, who went natural in late 2018 after encouragement from her hairstylist, returned to relaxers last year. "I feel like people understand now that just because you relax your hair doesn't mean you hate your natural hair." Ain't Nobody Got Time (or Money) For Thatįor all the women Allure spoke to, time consumption was the most prevalent reason for returning to relaxers. "It's kind of been more acceptable in a way to relax your hair," she says. She believes people in the community are voicing less disapproval. ![]() "Coming from other Black women, it wasn't really encouraging or helpful."īut she also acknowledges that in the last year, she has noticed a shift in the way the natural-hair community responds to others doing the same - at least online. "I would get some comments like, 'If I relaxed my hair I'm trying to fit into certain beauty standards,' or 'If I relaxed my hair, I don’t love my Black skin,'" White says. Unlike Hooper, White has maintained her relaxed hair despite some backlash she experienced from the natural-hair community after her video went live. "Locs are the style that works for me the best. Hooper ended up opting for locs instead, with the goal of keeping her hair natural while reducing the time she spends on it. Her curls remained intact, which she says was a relief because she had made the decision in a moment of exasperation. Hooper's experiment ultimately failed because she didn’t apply the product correctly and her hair didn't take to it. "I was being a little bit impulsive with it and I just kind of got frustrated with dealing with my hair and I was like, Let me just like straighten this out," she says. I just don't want to do it anymore, so I'm not."īut Hooper's hesitancy about straightening treatments changed suddenly and she decided to try an at-home relaxer. I'm tired of getting this chemical that burns on my head. "It was just more, I'm tired of my hair breaking off. "It wasn't like a conscious decision of, Oh, I want to be a part of this movement," she says of her initial decision to go natural. But while White felt an affiliation with the digital community, Hooper did not. Daisha Hooper, 28, also based in Austin, makes hair tutorial videos on her YouTube channel, DaishaView, and had been natural for a decade prior to attempting to relax her hair last December. It's often assumed that women who have natural hair are conscientiously part of a bigger - politicized - natural hair movement, but that isn't necessarily the case. Black women's hair remains a site of prejudice due to white/European beauty constructs that position straight hair as good hair. While the same isn't necessarily true today in terms of intention - which is difficult to assess on a collective basis - because of the history of how Black hair has been denigrated, the appearance in its natural form is still generally considered to express dissent. Natural, Not Radicalīefore the United States' social media-centric natural community, during the Black Power movement in the ‘60s, Black women who wore their natural Afro-textured hair were definitively seen as making political statements. "It was taking a lot of time and a lot of effort, or just more time and effort than I want to put into my hair, to just achieve a simple style." In addition to reclaiming her time, White believes that she's able to take better care of her hair now that it’s relaxed. ![]() ![]() "It was just a struggle for me to figure out my hair and determine what it likes, what it needs, what products work with it," she says.
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