As a little girl, one of the first thing I became conscious of, was my hair. It was thick, it was hard, it was black, it was knotty and it was all kinds of things I loved and hated at the same time. I took it for granted because I had it. My hair had never been cut. I was a bit of a Tom boy too, but my hair was my grounding. My lanky, gawky frame could not be mistaken for a boy.
It must have given me a lot of confidence. Growing up in Liberia afforded me this…
I realized this was a privilege immediately we stepped into our beautiful Ghana. My parents decided to bring us back home you see.
Suddenly my hair became a subject. It was strange to me because I was being discussed… this was a side of me that was being discussed. And decisions had been made about me that no one bothered to even look at how I was taking it all in. The conversations had with me right in the middle, but no one seeing me… I felt invincible and powerless. The frog in me expanded slightly…
MY HAIR WAS GOING DOWN 👇🏾
All the girls around me looked at me with envy. They longed for my hair. My hair was a reminder to them of what had been stripped off from them. It brought to the surface all manner of things. A deep self instability – you won’t understand this until you feel it 🤔
The day my hair was cut, I felt like I was being mutilated. I didn’t recognize the girl in the mirror. A part of me was gone and everyone around me was very happy, whiles I was dying inside. They got what they wanted and I was damaged for life…On the surface, my hair never came back the same again. It never felt the same. I am in my forty’s and still playing hide and seek with my hair
I really don’t understand the origin and practice in Ghana of being so against our hair… and why do I say our hair? Because we allow other races to keep their hair. If you were Indian, Middle Eastern, European, American, you name it, your hair can stay.
They said it was discipline. I was already disciplined and some of the girls with disciplined short hair, were very ‘advanced’ in indiscipline.
This conversation about Achimota not allowing locks is so much deeper than what we are seeing.
Great, GES has instructed no game, take the students. I am very happy about that. That was decisive leadership and should be commended.
But my fear is that we will be pacified and move off from an opportunity to discuss this practice of why the hair must be cut in the first place… why are we not being trained instead to managed our hair? 😅🤷🏾♀️🎶
But why do we even cut hair? Let’s look at the discipline it propounds and compare it to the damage.
I have nieces who I weep for inside because they love their hair, but I know the fate that awaits them.
At school we teach lifestyle. Isn’t it as important to teach young ladies about that which is a part of them? Their hair? The subject of hair is so important but it is so marginalized.
You are forced to rid of your troublesome hair. I used the word forced because given the chance, some girls will actually cut their hair. The point is that, It is choice.
Perhaps the bigger question is WHY DOES HAIR THREATEN?
Just like you are expected to manage other body parts, why can’t you be trusted to manage your own hair and keep it tidy? Why will it interfere…
It is therefore embedded in our psyche that there is a problem with you for life. Something perhaps other races do not have to contend with. We spend the rest of our lives playing catch up on hair.
Black people fuel a multi trillion dollar hair industry because of our insecurities around our hair and those trillions are made outside of Africa. It is not even coming to us. It is based in India and other places
Today it is hair, tomorrow it is religion, I get that… but let’s stay on the subject of hair a bit, shall we?
What has the black hair done wrong?
#Yaamusings
#blackhair #hair #Ghana #Achimota #yaaasantewa #permedhair #GES #GhanaEducation
Juliet Yaa Asantewa Asante 