Don't touch the hair! #JumpsBackward

Hair has always been a major deal for a woman.  Heck the Bible calls it her glory.  

Of course personal taste has a great deal to do with one's choice to wear lots of it or hardly any; wear it organically or chemically refashioned; wear one's naturally grown own or the own purchased  with one's money.

Regardless, hair is a preeetty big deal.


Naturally, I can't knowingly speak to the feelings about hair of women of other races, but I think it's safe enough to say that to the average black woman, her hair skirts dangerously close to the realm of sacred.    How else could one explain the number of hours and, or money many of us invest in its upkeep?  This is why I'm forever appalled by the sacrilegious actions of women who try to touch my hair!  Don't you know that every lock, every strand every braid has been strategically arranged?

I'm not going to begin a discussion on the deep stuff like how slavery and colonization and being woke have affected the way black women have seen and worn our hair over generations.  That's a conundrum for another setting and this blog is too trivial for that!

I'll just say that on many levels, for many black women, hair goes waaay beyond just trying to be a fashionista and may also border on being political.

But enough of that.

I've marginally acquiesced to the reality that I'm currently the closest many of the kids and even adults in my city have come or may even ever come to a real live black person, so I want to say I understand their curiosity.  As a result, touching my hair is something I have on occasion grudingly allowed.  Some people politely ask if they may touch it; but I have in more than a few instances had to give a pretend 'friendly' slap at some little elementary school hands whose owners have not asked to touch or are dissatisfied with merely one touch, their actions morphing into a tug assault.

Despite wearing braids 98% of the time, I still find someone touching and scrutinizing my hair a tad evasive.  I've had absolute strangers walk up randomly to me and ask to touch my hair.  One funny experience was with a woman at the gym who, after eyeballing me for a while, made such a request.  I gave her permission (my hair was sweaty anyway and I was going to wash it so I wasn't especially worried about a stranger handling it).  It was quite amusing (the lean your head and raise your eyebrow kind) how she tentatively stretched her hand and rapidly touched my hair as though it were a hot surface and she risked being somehow injured by it.  When she realized her hand to be still in tact she asked to touch it a second time all the time giggling, excitedly? foolishly? Hmmm ... I was half tempted to gesture 'get' LOL.

India Aire sings 'I am not my hair' which I kinda get what she may mean, but I still  sorta disagree with her because if you think about it we are our hair since the way we wear it represents what we think about ourselves or what we value/don't value.

Tell me I'm wrong!

I've known women to forego sleep and use the time instead to install braids #personalConfession; or forego a good night's sleep and hang their heads off the side of the bed so their curls would remain in tact #AlsoApersonalConfession.  There are women who spend hours at the salon and spend hundreds of dollars just so their hair can have the look they desire #thisIsClearlyAconfessionalMinusTheBooth.

On the flipside, there are women who don't give two hoots about their hair: whose hair is unimaginatevely styled and not in the least trendy.  Some whose hair is unkempt, even sometimes smelly because the other things they have to do take precedence over hair grooming - not a condemnation, (except maybe for the smelly ones) but a statement of fact.

Debatable? Sure. But I'm gonna go out on a limb and say I am my hair.