Isn’t she lovely?

The beaming bella you see above is my homegirl Andrea — brilliant blogger of Fly, creator of awesome natural hair You Tube videos, and now creator of unique art that you can proudly adorn your walls with.

These prints are available to you at Andrea’s online store for the I Love My Hair project! This all began as a project for her thesis class, as Andrea herself explains in this post.

I love learning about the artistic process, and Andrea remains a continual inspiration. Her prints range from $25 to $30, and would make a fabulous gift for any Afrobella in your life during this holiday season (don’tcha think?)

Click here to get yours!

Related posts:

1. Hair Care for Little Afrobellas
2. Stylin’ Little Afrobellas
3. Afrobellas of the Week: Sweet Honey In The Rock, A capella Afrobellas

One of the most popular questions I get from my Trinidadian afrobellas is – where can I get these products you speak of? It’s true – in the USA we’ve got a wealth of natural hair goodness at ready disposal. When these products are imported and sold elsewhere, they’re often marked up to high heaven or imported in quantities that don’t meet demand.

Well Trini bellas, there’s a new store for you to check out. Body Beautiful, a brand new beauty supply store has just opened on Ariapita Avenue. I learned of this via my high school listserv — yes indeed, the owner is an alumni of my high school. Hilarians forever!

The store is offering natural bath, body, and hair care products. I’m not sure if Miss Jessie’s or Curls is available yet, but one of my favorite brands, Kinky Curly, is finally available for sale. Click here to read my review from 2006. Since then the brand has expanded to include some new products (the shampoo, the children’s line, and Midnight Miracle which I think I NEED in my LIFE). For now I’ll just say, start with the Knot Today. It remains one of my natural hair must-haves because it is THAT good.

Click here to check out Body Beautiful’s Facebook page, and if you’re in the neighborhood stop by and get what your hair needs!

Related posts:

1. Ask Afrobella — Curly, Coily, Kinky, or Coarse
2. Get Kinky!
3. Winter Hair Care Advice from Curly Nikki

Picture this: I’m standing in line at the supermarket last night, about to pay for my groceries. The casher and bagger are both young African American females with relaxed hair. One of them appears frustrated with her hair (judging from the haphazard way in which it was styled).

The bagger turns to me while bagging my groceries.

“Is that your natural hair?”

Yes.

“But you use a chemical to get it like that, right?”

No.

“Cause I saw on the Tyra show…”

You can just imagine my expression at that point. I bit back the “Lawdamercy” that wanted to come out of my mouth, and tried to engage the girls in conversation without being preachy. The cashier started to tell me that she was interested in going natural, but “can’t deal with nappy hair.” I tried to explain to her that it takes time to completely grow out a relaxer and transition to natural hair, it takes commitment and patience, and part of that means learning to love your hair’s real texture, regardless of how “nappy” it may be, it’s yours and it’s beautiful…but of course at that point I was holding up the line, my groceries were bagged and it was time to end the conversation. So I just let them know about Afrobella and BVHairTalk.com, and went on my way.

But I keep thinking about the reaction natural hair inspires.

Every week without fail, I get questions from someone.

What products do you use? How long have you been natural? What made you decide to do *that* to your hair? And these questions are usually followed by an explanation. I like your hair but mine would never look like that. It looks good on you but I can’t deal with my natural hair. My texture is too difficult to deal with. Or, I used to be natural but I wear a weave/use a relaxer now because… (like I’m some kinda natural hair police who is silently judging them for their own hair choices).

To which my response is usually, girl do YOU! Please know that you are beautiful. And if you ever have questions, or feel ready to make the transition — visit my blog or e mail me. Then I usually hand them a business card if I feel so inspired (or if I have some in my purse at the time). I try to respond with warmth, candor, and encouragement… but sometimes the questions get me down. Not because I don’t like talking to people about my hair, but just because I find the ignorance about natural hair to be so depressing. It’s astounding how many beautiful, bright women of color have no idea what the natural texture of their hair truly looks like, and just assume that it’s unattractive and uncontrollable without the use of chemical means.

I was inspired to title this post from a previous one — Natural Attitudes, which I wrote in 2007 about the reaction my hair gets in Trinidad. My location and life circumstances have changed quite a bit, but some things still remain the same.

What’s the typical reaction you get to your natural hair? How do you respond to it?

Related posts:

1. Define Your Natural
2. You Have Taught Me
3. Natural Attitudes — Taking the Plunge

Your girl Afrobella is having a beauty crisis of her very own. It’s getting colder and colder here in Chicago, and I can’t hide from it forever… my first winter is just around the corner. My skin’s becoming noticeably dryer, and my hair… well let’s just say my hair seems to be trying to acclimate to the changes. My coil pattern has stretched out somewhat, my hair feels and looks dryer to the touch, and the less said about my scalp, the better.

I had some ideas about what I needed to do to resolve these issues and winterize my natural ‘do, but just in the nick of time, a hero came along.

I recently interviewed Nikki Walton, better known as Curly Nikki. Her blog is so focused, informative, and welcoming – truly a breath of fresh air in the natural community. Love me some Curly Nikki! You can read my whole interview over at AOL Black Voices — Nikki shared details on everything from her own interest and expertise in natural hair care, to her predictions and hopes for the future of black hair. And she answered a special question for me.

I recently moved from Miami to Chicago, and I’m about to encounter my first winter! Any advice for me re: winterizing my hair routine?

Remember to seal in your water-based moisturizer or conditioner with shea buter, castor oil, or other emollients. This will protect your ends from the harsh winds. Weekly deep conditioning treatments won’t hurt either! During the winter months, replenishing moisture should be your top priority!

OK, I already LOVE DevaCare One Condition, and I’ve tried some other Curl Junkie product samples (thanks to the generosity of my girl Brittany of Clumps of Mascara and Loc Rocker!) but have never tried Jessicurl before. And I keep hearing bellas rave over Herbal Essences, which hasn’t done anything for my coils in the past…but maybe I’m up for a refresher course.

So that’s the winter hair advice I got from Curly Nikki! Once again, clicky click to read our whole interview on AOL Black Voices.

For my bellas who have been living in a cold climate and dealing with winter weather year in, year out – what do you advise a newbie like me to do?

Related posts:

1. Hair Care for Little Afrobellas
2. The Afrobella Interview: Motown Girl, the Curly Hair Guru
3. How NOT to Care For Your Child’s Hair

Can I be real with y’all? I’m kinda sick of Chris Rock’s Good Hair. Raise your hand if you’re with me.

The endless media tour. The premature outrage. The trailer, which showed all of the docucomedy’s best clips. To paraphrase Chris Rock himself, I’m tired, tired, tired of Good Hair.

So I’m gonna conclude writing about it once and for all with this review.

I hate going into a movie when I already know too much about it. And I already knew WAY too much about Good Hair. And to be honest, I didn’t quite understand the controversy and call for boycotting the film. As I said in the Black Voices podcast: it’s important to remember who’s making this movie. It’s Chris Rock, the man who brought us Pootie Tang! The comedian who continually courts controversy. What did we REALLY expect from Chris Rock besides comedy? Social commentary? A historical perspective? Sorry — wrong filmmaker. Wrong film. For more informed views on black hair, see some of the documentaries I mentioned in my previous post, Before Chris Rock’s Good Hair.

As a comedy, Good Hair delivers. There were scenes and one-liners that were laugh out loud funny. Some scenes brought back painful memories of my own burning scalp. And there were scenes that caused my throat to tighten up and tears to well in my eyes. One particular scene, where a three-year-old girl explains that she has her hair relaxed “because we’re supposed to,” particularly ached to watch.

If there’s one thing Rock does well, it’s underscore the point that kiddie perm is an unnecessary evil. There are a few points where you can see true concern and consideration on Rock’s face as he interviews the subjects in this docucomedy, and whenever he touches on this particular topic — that little children in our community are taught that their own hair texture isn’t beautiful the way it is, and are conditioned to crave chemical relaxers from such a tender age — you can see the ache in his eyes. It’s in moments like that where you can see his genuine motivation in making this film.

I believe the power of scenes like that are undercut by the barbershop scene, where a group of black men cackle wildly while confessing that they feel a level of intimacy with white women because they can run their fingers through their hair.

The audience at my screening of Good Hair wasn’t the target demographic. The theater was in a “white” neighborhood, and there were few people present — I’d estimate 10, tops, and I seemed to be the only woman of color there. So when laughter rang out in the crowd, it was easy to tell who was laughing, and it was interesting to see what the audience laughed at. It sometimes underscored what frustrated women were telling Rock when he appeared on Oprah to promote this film for the second time. When the Caucasian couple sitting behind me burst out laughing at the scene in the relaxer factory, I wondered if this is what the upset black woman in Oprah’s audience meant when she admonished Chris Rock for “telling our secrets.”

If I had to do it over again, I’d probably have waited to see Good Hair when it makes its inevitable debut on HBO. It was amusing and interesting, but I didn’t learn anything I didn’t already know. I have to agree with The Hotness Grrrl on this point — if you must be mad at Good Hair, be mad that Chris Rock’s wife, Malaak, didn’t appear in the film. I was perplexed by that, especially since so many celebrities gave on-camera interviews about their weaves, and the whole point of the film was that Rock’s own daughters had negative feelings about their natural hair texture. That would have made Rock’s film a little more interesting, but would have probably made his home life a lot more uncomfortable.

In general, Good Hair is worth seeing. The underlying message of the film, “the stuff on top of your head is not as important as what’s inside your head,” resonates. Will this film make anyone stop and ask themselves – why do we use sodium hydroxide to alter the texture of our hair? Will we ever truly believe, as Kari Cobham’s Daytona Beach news article states, that “good hair is healthy hair, regardless of texture”? That remains to be seen.

Did you see Good Hair? What do you think? Was it worth the price of the movie ticket, or not?

Related posts:

1. Oprah And Good Hair
2. Good Hair, According to Chris Rock
3. The New York Times on Black Hair

I know y’all already know how I feel, but I wrote about it for BVHairTalk in a post titled I’m on Team Zahara! Just so everyone else knows.

Baby Z looks fine to me!

Is it weird to quote yourself? Oh well:

“Sometimes when I read posts on gossip blogs about Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s children, I’m left feeling lost and alone in the universe.

Small wonder I got a dose of kiddie hair relaxer at age 7 — I didn’t exactly make myself easy to handle.
When I see Baby Z — and the same goes for her sister, Shiloh — I see two happy, loved, very independent-minded little girls, and an indulgent mother who allows them to express their own style.”

“I disagree with the conclusion of that Newsweek article: “…there will come a day when this beautiful little African girl will understand what it means to be an African American woman in this society and realize unlike her younger sister, hers is not a wash-and-go world.” That sentence revealed more about the author than she may have realized. For some African American women, the expectation isn’t that hair needs to be tamed into submission. For many natural hair bloggers and our readers, this world is whatever we want it to be. I’m comfortable and happy with a wash-and-go style, and I dare you to look at a natural-hair Web site like Le Coil and tell me those women look unkempt or “a hot mess.”

So there you have it, and for further reading allow me to recommend Roslyn Holcomb’s take, and Gina of What About Our Daughters, who titles her post Leave Zahara Alone!

Cosign THAT.

I’d love to hear your opinions on this, seeing as any photograph of this four year old child will invariably be torn to shreds by writers, bloggers, and commenters who apparently are all experts on black hair styling. Is Baby Z under a different kind of scrutiny than other celebrity kids her age? What are your feelings on that? And if you have advice for Brad and Angelina about her hair, what would it be?

Related posts:

1. A Doll For Baby Z
2. Afrobella On Newsweek
3. Tyra Banks Real Hair Dismay

I’ve been told that my whole life. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve gotten better at covering it up, but I’m still a pretty sensitive Piscean soul. Quick to feel empathy, quick to love, quick to be offended. So maybe I’m not the best bella to respond to the hot new style strutting down the runway at the Louis Vuitton show at Paris Fashion Week. The style statement? Oversize afro wigs on all the models. Which are being called brilliantly cartoonish by the WWD.

Like I said, I’m oversensitive. To me, my hair isn’t comic relief, it isn’t “cartoonish,” it isn’t a style statement. It grows out of my head this way. So my general response to people in afro wigs, at sports games, on Halloween, is The People’s Eyebrow and a we-are-not-amused attitude. It irks me. Am I wrong?

I saw these pics over at one of my favorite blogs, NY Mag’s The Cut, and my eyes practically rolled themselves on out of my face. Really, LV? Afro wigs are what’s hot in the streets now? Is this an attempt to be more inclusive?

Hey – at least there was one model of color in the show, right? Edited 2:45 p.m. — I stand corrected — there were several models of color in the show. Click here to see the complete WWD slideshow, more black models hit the runway towards the show’s finale, it appears.

I dunno, y’all. Talk amongst yourselves. Am I being oversensitive, as per usual? Or should I be delighted that afros are making waves at Paris Fashion Week this year?

Related posts:

1. Ethnically Ambiguous?
2. Allo, Blackface
3. Weekend Rewind — Louis Armstrong’s Other Artistry

This is the time of year where pink ribbons mysteriously appear on every item at the drugstore, where annual walks are walked and funds are raised, all in the names of the Susan G. Komen fund and breast cancer research.

When most people think of breast cancer, they think of the most obviously affected area. Not everyone addresses the less obvious things that are affected by breast cancer, like self esteem, overall well being, and hair. But for some women, cancer can attack those things are well.

When my Aunty Gemma was diagnosed with breast cancer, I got to see how breast cancer can go far beyond the chest. My aunt struggled with hair loss, and what to do in the aftermath of cancer therapy. In an effort to answer some of her questions, I reached out to an expert in the field.

Vaso Spirou, the owner of Miami Beach’s Salon Vaso is known and widely respected as a master colorist and hairstyling artist who specializes in curly hair and caters to the needs of South Beach’s elite. Her salon is sleek, sexy, and captures the exclusivity of the city. But Vaso’s hidden passion is in helping and serving the needs of those affected by cancer. As a survivor herself, she knows all too well the debilitating effects the disease can have.

“It has a major emotional effect on your beauty. Losing your hair can help you feel even worse,” she said in a telephone interview.

For clients of her gorgeous salon, Vaso customizes store-bought human hair wigs — offering scalp measurement so the wigs fit perfectly, and styling the wigs so they look normal and natural for each customer. “Why would you want to look different, especially when you are going through something as serious as breast cancer?” she asked.

Vaso offered five helpful tips for patients dealing with cancer-related hair loss.

1 — Find a hairdresser who knows you and knows what you’re going through. Tell them you’re hunting for wigs that they can customize. It takes personal attention, and if they’re unaccustomed to styling wigs, perhaps they know someone who can help.

2 — When the hair grows back post-chemotherapy, it will grow back thicker, denser, and more coarse. Definitely different. It’s typically more wiry. So be aware that there will most likely be a change in your hair’s texture after cancer. Sometimes it even grows back a different color.

3 — Don’t even think about relaxer, chemical treatments, or extensions right away. When your hair grows back thick and healthy enough, you can use extensions and chemical treatments again. If you know you’re going to go through chemotherapy, it may be best to consider cutting your hair off and wearing a wig at a certain point — just to have an easy transition into the hair issues that may result.

4 — Don’t be afraid of looking like you’re wearing a wig while you’re wearing a wig. There are amazing wigs that kind of adhere to your scalp. I recommend hotheads.com.

5 — Last, and in my opinion, most importantly, Vaso recommends dealing with the psychological effects on self esteem by taking a positive attitude. Speaking from her own experience, she declared “I woke up this morning saying to myself — I wanna live, I don’t want to just survive. They have to make up their minds to live every day.”

In addition to being sagacious, sweet, worldly and wonderful, Vaso is charitable. Here’s another reason for you to make an appointment with her if you’re ever in the 305 — all proceeds earned on Mondays in the month of October will be donated to Susan G. Komen for the Cure. Salon Vaso also offers incredible manicures, pedicures, and body treatments. Visit her website here, and you can also follow Salon Vaso on Twitter.

Are you a breast cancer survivor? Or do you know someone who is? Please feel free to share your experience and advice regarding cancer and hair loss right here — you could be helping someone who’s dealing with this issue right now!

Related posts:

1. Oprah’s Hair — So Many Questions!
2. You Have Taught Me
3. Afrobella Asks You — Hair Help for Little Dreads

LOVE. THEM.

So imagine how geeked I was to meet them! Yup, two weekends ago I had the privilege of meeting the Funky Divas during a stop on their Rooted in Nature beauty tour, on assignment for Black Voices.

Click here to read my original post, and click below to watch the video!

Please excuse my nerves.
I also met Angela Guy, senior VP general manager of Softsheen Carson, who told me more about Roots of Nature. I’m curious about that reconstructing deep treatment, so expect a review to come!

The girls were sweet as pie and seemed honestly interested in checking out the site. So Cindy, Terry, and Dawn might be reading this. If so — hi!! It was wonderful to meet you, and I look forward to hearing some new music from one of my favorite groups ever!

What’s your favorite En Vogue song, bellas? I’ve been listening to Free Your Mind lately, and WOW that song and the video are so progressive and ahead of its time!

Related posts:

1. En Vogue, Retro Chic
2. Vogue Italia Comment Love!
3. Patrice meets Patrece!

Oprah with an afro

My favorite part of this week’s much-talked-about episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show where Chris Rock and Solange Knowles talked about Good Hair? That one photo of Oprah back in the Eighties. The one Chris Rock referred to as “the mean news.” Oprah had the fro that dreams are made of! Round, solid, like the Jackson 5 back in the day. That was a fro with power.

I saw Oprah’s Good Hair episode a day late — by the time I watched it, my friends on Twitter and Facebook had basically recapped the whole thing sentence by sentence online. But still, I watched and was pleasantly surprised. In my opinion, Oprah’s hair episode was ten times better than Tyra’s — because she made sure to have balance. Oprah talked about relaxers, she revealed her hair history (and Chris Rock’s!), she was inclusive and featured white women and their own hair struggles (Ali Wentworth’s segment on being blonde was HILARIOUS!). Oprah’s episode was more well rounded in the sense that she attempted to effectively explain the similarities, while still recognizing the enormous differences between black and white hair.

But there was still some points raised that left me scratching my head.

At one point, Chris Rock declares that “women relax their hair for other women, because men don’t care about hair.” Then he goes on and on about when he’s dated Asian and white women in the past, how his hands have been thirsty, and he’s enjoyed running his fingers through their hair. So… which is it? Pick one and stick with it, Chris. In my experience, men DO care about hair. They just try to convince you that they don’t. They may not notice if you subtly change your style. But in general — and in my experience — men will express anguish if you start talking about cutting your hair off, or changing the style dramatically.

Forget kids, Chris Rock will say the darndest things. And he got Oprah to laugh at the craziest stuff. “That’s when you were a slave, huh?” he said about her childhood photograph. “That’s when you were hanging out with Anita Hill!” he said of another. And Oprah laughed and laughed. A little too hard, almost… but I bought it. Hats off to Oprah for befriending a comedian who we all have seen make jokes about her love life. “That lucky Stedman!”

Oprah and Chris Rock talk Good Hair

I bet this Oprah episode was a wake up call for women who haven’t yet educated themselves about their hair, or who haven’t really thought about the reasons they may choose the styles that they do, or question the pain they put themselves through in the name of hair. Certain key points seemed to really resonate with the audience — the declaration that black hair is a 9 billion dollar industry, that Solange Knowles used to spend more than I ever made in a year on weaves and extensions alone, and that little kids are suffering from self esteem problems because of this madness. I absolutely loved the story of the family from Pasadena who Skyped in — Rolondo, Vanessa, and Raven. The mother cut off her hair to better identify with her three year old daughter, who was already struggling with not feeling as pretty as her classmates because of the texture of her natural hair. I thought that was a lovely story. And maybe it’s all in my head, but it seemed a little pointed when Oprah said to the mother “so you cut your hair off. And Chris…made a movie.” It made me wish Malaak Compton-Rock was on the set, just to add in her two cents to the whole Good Hair discussion.

Chris Rock’s Good Hair has already been getting huge buzz, but Oprah just set this film up for even bigger success when it opens October 9. I look forward to going to the theater on opening night, so I can experience it with the rest of America. How will this movie perform at the box office? Will Good Hair start a revolution? Will it lead women to change the way they look at, and consequently treat their hair? Only time will tell, I suppose.

What did you think?

Related posts:

1. What’s Good About Good Hair?
2. Oprah’s Hair — So Many Questions!
3. Tyra Banks Real Hair Dismay