Suburban Afro

Last week, a little girl in my local supermarket loudly declared that I had super amazing hair. Naturally I said thank you and beamed for the rest of the day.

I generally tell people to ignore comments from strangers about their appearance, but this is a special sub-category of comments from strangers and should absolutely be taken on board. Friends and family will often tell you that you look nice, even if you look a bit rough. Do you know who doesn’t tell you that you look nice when you don’t? Little girls in supermarkets, that you have never met before!

I pay a lot less attention to my appearance these days than I probably should. I’ve never been particularly high maintenance, but whatever standard I used to aim for has been drastically lowered, even on special occasions. It’s a combination of working from home, being a web developer, being older, being quite lazy and probably a long list of other things. Spending more time on my appearance doesn’t have any obvious benefit, so I tend not to. I’d like to say that I have big plans to change this, but I like you far too much to lie to you.

I’ve been getting my hair braided on and off since I was 13 and these days braiding my hair is mostly about how practical it is. Not only is braiding practical, but it also fits my budget and elevates my look with minimal effort (after the initial braiding session) During lockdown I finally mastered braiding my own hair. I’m still not the best at it, but I can now braid my hair to a decent standard (just don’t look too close)

Somewhere on this site I’ve probably already told you that I wasted my childhood wishing I had long blonde hair. I obviously don’t have long, blonde hair genes, so braids are an easy way to change the colour of your hair without the chemicals. Over the years I’ve been a blonde, a brunette and probably every other colour of the rainbow. Blue hair is cool, but if you ever want to impress a little kid, pink mermaid hair is definitely the way to go.

Today it was announced that the treatment and styling of afro and texturised hair would be included as part of the standing training for all hairdressers in the UK. On the face of it, this announcement doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it is.

It’s a big deal because having afro hair has always made those of us who have it an “other’ It isn’t intentional, it’s just a thing. A thing that until recently, a lot of Black British women didn’t even question. A thing that was a big deal, that none of us really paid attention to. It is a big deal that in a multicultural society, made up of people with ancestors from all over the world, it was only just decided, that none European hair should be included in the training routinely given to new hairdressers throughout the country. It’s a big deal because it is making some of us question, why this has taken so long.

Before today, anybody wanting to cater for black clients, had to obtain their hairdressing qualifications and train separately to learn what they needed for clientele with African or Caribbean heritage. This means that it’s generally more expensive for people to learn how to deal with our hair and it gives certain salons a “free license” to charge more for delivering specialist services.

Being able to get your hair styled or even just trimmed at one of my local salons is a privilege I don’t have. It’s not a big deal, but it is a problem when you start to look at it through the lens of inclusion. I live in a village with nine hairdressers and five or six barbers, but I have to go elsewhere if I want my hair done. It’s not the end of the world and trust me, the last thing I want is for every single salon to suddenly start offering services, that they’re not skilled in, but what message does that give to people with the same hair as me? We need to go to specialist places, because our natural hair has never been considered “regular” enough, to even be included as part of the standard training and qualifications for hairdressers.

It isn’t only hairdressing services, there is also an issue with haircare products and cosmetics. I’ve spent my entire life unable to buy a bottle of shampoo or any cosmetics from my local Asda, Tesco or Sainsburys. A few years ago SuperDrug made a commercial decision to stock afro hair products, which meant that for the first time, I didn’t have to travel to another town to buy shampoo, conditioner or any of the other products that my hair simply can’t manage without.

I have often joked about having to make a 30 mile round trip every time I run out of shampoo, but once you stop laughing, you realise that it isn’t funny. Having a car and some knowledge about what my hair needs (most of which came from a long painful process of trial and error) means that throughout the 25 years that I’ve lived in Stockport, I have been able to travel into Manchester and buy what I need for myself and my children. How much of my life have I wasted driving to and from Longsight, Hulme and more recently Gorton when I need something, meanwhile my friends and neighbours have always been able to grab what they needed whilst they were in Asda, doing their weekly food shop?

These days my television screen and social media feeds are full of cosmetic brands, proudly declaring that they can provide foundations, concealers and an assortment of other cosmetic base products for every skin tone. On the one hand that looks like progress, but on the other, I want to know what took them so long.

All the big brand cosmetic household names are older than me. Why have they suddenly decided that I deserve their products? Did RiRi cause this by making it a point of difference for the Fenty brand?

I am almost fifty years old and I have been right here all that time. Stood right here with my beautiful brown skin and money to spend, so why is it only now that they can offer me a range of foundations?

I’m pretty old and unlike the teenagers of today with their Mac lip palettes and contouring skills, I started my make up journey with budget brands. I’m not ashamed to say that I had my ugly cheap eyeshadow, drying pink lipstick and blue mascara phase. It’s how schoolies learnt back in the eighties. No matter how bad the thickly applied, cornflower blue eyeshadow and clumpy electric blue mascara looked, the worst part of my early attempts at make up artistry (if I dare call it that) was always the cheap, terrible, badly applied, 10 shades too pale foundation. Over time my skills improved, but the choice of budget foundations didn’t. Luckily my skin was always pretty good, but what about the brown skinned teenage girls who needed that coverage and weren’t at a stage in their lives where they could upgrade?

Haircare and make up sounds petty and frivolous, but it isn’t. Caring how we look isn’t petty or frivolous. It is self esteem. It is forming our adult personalities. It is a rite of passage. It is belonging.

The 2020 Christmas tv ad campaigns caused uproar because some people were disgusted at the number of black faces on their TV screens. How dare Sainsbury’s show families, who weren’t white, eating food! How dare they! “You’re all just copying America because of one bloke” [insert additional racist bullshit here] On the one hand it’s great that there is more diversity in advertising, but on the other, it’s the same old question, what took you so long? People with brown skin have always eaten food and we usually buy it from supermarkets.

Representation matters and during my childhood, representation really wasn’t important (apparently) Black people certainly existed, but you wouldn’t see black families on adverts or anybody with brown skin advertising beauty products. If television adverts had gradually become more inclusive over time, then the obvious and performative nature of so many brands, suddenly including black people in their advertising, might not have triggered the disgusting wave of toxicity. (Who am I kidding, of course it would!)

I’m glad to see the new changes to hairdressing courses and I’m glad that there is more diversity on television, but now that these processes have finally started, let’s not treat this as a tick box exercise. Let’s look for other opportunities to be inclusive. Let’s be genuinely diverse, without the temporary, performative nonsense. It’s ok that we’re different, but that shouldn’t mean that I have to be excluded.

I generally change my hair every few months and these days that almost always involves some form of hair extension.

I’ve had my hair braided on and off since I was about 14 years of age and every few years, usually when I’m low on funds, I wish that I knew how to braid my own hair. I have never felt this more than I have over the last few months.

We’re currently living through a global epidemic, and during the full lockdown there were zero opportunities for me to toddle off to a salon to get my hair done. (That also included sitting in somebody else’s front room, where lots of my previous hair sessions have taken place) The whole of the United Kingdom was on lockdown, so the only people I was allowed within two metres of were those that live in my house.

I rarely redo my hair as promptly as I should. If a stylist says that I need to come back in six weeks, I automatically translate that into three months and strut my way out of the salon with full Beyonce style swagger. At the start of lockdown all those weeks ago I had a weave which was probably due for removal a couple of weeks into the Covid-19 crisis. So rather than risk leaving it in for the duration, with no idea how long that was going to be, I took it out.

My relationship with my hair is now at a stage where I’m happy to hang out with my afro for a while, but taking my extensions out with no idea when I’d be able to have them put back in was a pretty bold move. This year alone I’ve had pink braids, blue braids, a red weave and regular brief visits from the fro. Some natural hair advocates would have you believe that I’m not me if I have hair extensions or any form of chemical treatment. I actually believe that I’m not me without them. I’m finally at a stage where I’m happy to say good bye to the relaxers and curly perms, but I have no intention of ever giving up my hair extensions. Not because I hate my natural hair or because I’m desperately trying to convince the world that waist length blue hair is part of my genetic make up. Hair extensions make my life easier. There are lots of steps to looking after my hair properly, hair extensions allow me to shortcut a few of these most days. I get up in the morning and my main hair styling decision is as follows: Shall I put a bobble in or not?

The convenience of having my hair in extensions cannot be expressed strongly enough. I once spent 18 hours having my hair braided but over the time that I kept them in that would still have saved me a considerable amount of styling time. There is one overriding factor in the “grown from my scalp versus bought from the shop” debate, which is is that I personally believe that I look better with them in. Discussion closed.

So now that I’ve set the scene for how much I love my hair extensions and positioned it against a backdrop of having no hope of getting them redone, it’s time to move onto how I resolved my problem. The short version is a trip to Superdrug for afro appropriate shampoo, conditioner and hair treatments, a lot of YouTube, a bit of online shopping and me finally managing to plait my own hair. [Insert video of cheering crowds]

My new skills don’t mean that I’ll be abandoning the salons indefinitely, but they do give me options. I live in a village with at at least 9 salons and none of them specialise in afro hair, so sorting out the fro is always an event. If you’ve ever found yourself making a desperate Facebook post asking for recommendations because your stylist is unavailable and having to sift out the one genuine suggestion from the “just get the clippers out” joke responses, you’ll appreciate just how much my basic plaiting skills are going to change my life.

I’ve wanted to be able to plait my own hair since I was in my late teens and as I hurtle ever closer to my half century, thanks to the pandemic, I’ve finally learnt how. Yay me! I’m not the only one that has suddenly found herself in a position where they’ve had to make the jump from understanding the theory to actually developing hands on skills. One of my friends now has a full Facebook timeline of hairdos she’s done for herself and her family.

Quality wise there is absolutely no competition between me and any of the people I have ever paid to braid my hair but I’m proud of myself none the less. Last night for the third time since the global crisis started, I braided my own hair. Now that I’ve mastered that, I think it might be time to turn my attention to improving my DIY skills, because that kitchen isn’t going to tile itself!