Suburban Afro

BLACK HISTORY MONTH

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October is Black History Month here in the United Kingdom and so far I have spent it all with my natural hair. It isn’t a deliberate statement but the timing does seem to work.

I still scowl at my reflection in the mirror first thing in the morning, but I’m OK with it. My hair looks the same as it did when I was eleven, but the main difference is that I now bother combing it properly and putting a bobble in it.

As per usual there are people wanting to know when we’ll be celebrating white history month and wondering why black history needs it’s own place in the calendar. The short version is that if I, as a black woman, have made it into my mid 40s without knowing anything about the history of black people in the United Kingdom then there is a problem in which stories are being shared. I shouldn’t have to go and seek out this knowledge, it should already be there alongside the rest of things I was taught at school. There is no way for my children to understand their ancestry if I don’t.

As American television programming takes over more of the UK schedules, there is a danger that Black history will only ever be seen through the lens of how things were / are in the United States and the stories of black Britons will be lost. I know about Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, but how many black British men and women do I know the stories of? Not enough. If nothing else Black History Month is an annual reminder of how much I don’t know and a prompt to find out more.

By the end of the month my afro will almost certainly be buried under a new set of hair extensions, but hopefully I’ll have some new knowledge to go alongside the new hairdo.

 

SEEING DOUBLE. THE CURSE OF THE DOUBLE HAIRDO

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There are lots of ways to have hair extensions. Quite often my go to solution is to bury my natural hair under my shop bought hair. There are various methods, but the end result is that you only see my new (and allegedly improved) hair.

This period of equilibrium exists for a brief time until eventually we witness the return of the original hair, peeking out from under the shop bought hair, giving rise to the dreaded Double Hair Do

The good news is that for a while I’m the only person who knows that there is a problem. The circle of awareness then widens to include people that are in close proximity and know about hair extensions. If the matter is not resolved, it will eventually become obvious to almost everybody, or at least that’s how it feels.

I’m currently at the relatively early stages of the Double Hair Do, but my shop bought hair is fighting to reveal my secret. At first it was quite subtle and could be resolved fairly easily on a daily basis. We were at stage one of the big reveal. As long as I parted my hair the right way there wasn’t a problem. Stage two is a slight increase, a little more work is required but it’s doable. By stage three I’m wearing a headband on a daily basis – whether I like it or not.

It’s no secret that I’m a regular user of hair extensions. I have no intention of trying to convince people that my long luscious locks grew from my scalp, but despite my honesty and openness, I draw the line at people being able to see the stitching!

Once you reach stage three things speed up and if you don’t sort things out you eventually end up sporting a short afro, whilst wearing your expensive weave like a hat on top.

If you’re a regular follower of this blog, you’ll know that I’m generally guilty of drifting and sometimes hurtling into the Delay Zone. The curse of the Double Hair Do is one of the consequences of spending time in that zone and it reduces the time I get to enjoy my hair and makes me feel self conscious. I have a reasonable level of self esteem for somebody that looks as ordinary as I do and whilst I don’t mind not looking like Tyra Banks, Gabrielle Union or whichever gorgeous black woman springs to mind, I’d like to spend most of my time looking like a half decent version of me. Feeling self conscious about the Double Hairdo is time I don’t really want to waste.

The vast majority of the people I come across in my daily life have no idea that I’m fighting these imaginary battles and it’s probably for the best. Spending this much time thinking about my hair isn’t productive (or in any way logical) so the answer seems to be that I need to pay more attention to what my hair is telling me. Who knows maybe one day I’ll grow up to be one of those women that schedules their next visit to the hairdressers before their hair needs redoing and I’ll finally be able to banish the Curse of the Double Hair Do once and for all.

 

I SHOULD BE GORGEOUS BY NOW

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I’m average looking. That’s not a good thing or a bad thing, it’s just a thing. Most people are average looking, it is quite unusual to meet people who are either truly beautiful or hideously ugly. The trick is to make the best of what you have.

I looked my best when I was 25/26. I was young and slim. I was old enough to know what suited me and I was earning enough money to buy the clothes, products and hairdo’s that flattered me most. I had my first management position and was driving around in a Golf GTi listening to loud music. I’m not going to lie, if I’d realised that was the best looking I was ever going to be, I’d have strutted a lot more.

Most people are average looking but with the right amount of know how can present themselves as being good looking or at least better looking than they are by nature and this educational process usually starts in your early teens. I learnt the hard way that blue eyeshadow wasn’t my best look, especially not if you just kept using the tiny sponge applicator until the colour on your eyelids looked the same as it did in the Constance Carroll set you were using. Back in the day, the make up collection of teenage girls started cheap and cheerful, none of this MAC lip colours and Zoella tutorials, if you were in your early teens during the 1980’s in Manchester, then you were probably familiar with Constance Carroll. Blue eyeshadows, pink lipsticks and electric blue mascaras were part of the learning curve. Like most girls my age, I went through the curve on my path to finding out how to apply make up properly and actually have the make up enhance my features rather than make me look ridiculous. It also helped to avoid being laughed at by my older brother. It turned out that pink circles on your cheeks wasn’t a flattering look for me and no amount of blue eyeshadow and badly applied, none moisturising, red lipstick was ever going to change that.

Despite the fact that I wasn’t especially very good at applying make up,  or choosing flattering outfits, I was very persistent and kept on going until I finally got the hang of it. Left to my own devices I would have worn stilleto heels and full make up on a daily basis but there was no way my mum was going to entertain that as an idea so it became a special occasions thing. I went through a very brief phase of not leaving the house without make up but you can probably count on one hand the number of weeks, if not days that lasted for.

When I was little I assumed that I’d be pretty when I got older. I’m not sure where that assumption came from, but little me, complete with my small uneven afro, was convinced that I’d look like a cross between Diana Ross and Donna Summer by the time I was a grown up. We were the same colour and they had the long hair I craved, so it kind of made sense. If I was seven years old now, I’d probably aim to be Beyonce.

Focusing on clothing rather than my usual obsession with my hair, my first few jobs involved a fairly specific dress code so I only needed to choose clothes for going out. As a mechanic I wore overalls and steel toe capped boots and as a postwoman I wore a Royal Mail uniform, which meant that I never woke up in the morning and had to plan an outfit. By the time I was 17 I’d transferred over to administration and once I moved past my initial stage of turning up to my job in the Personnel Department wearing jeans, I always knew what to wear. Offices have their own uniform, which despite the endless choices is actually quite straight forward. As long as you own lots of plain tops and stick to wearing either smart pants or a suit you’re set. Top Tip: When buying a suit, buy the jacket, the skirt and the trousers. The world of knowing what to wear in the morning was disrupted by retraining as a web developer. Jeans and hoodies are very practical and being warm and comfortable is very appealing. There are few professions where that particular dress code is acceptable and it’s a very easy habit to get into when you work from home. Over the last few years I’ve spent so much time dressed like a 12 year old boy that I’m not sure I remember how to dress properly. I can’t just revert back to how I used to dress (or can I?) and there is nothing like aging 10 years and gaining 2 dress sizes to make you feel nervous about experimenting.

So if teenage me didn’t look glamorous because I wasn’t allowed and current me isn’t glamorous because I’m out of practice, and lets face it far too lazy to entertain that amount of effort on a daily basis, it looks as though I’m going to have to save my glamour for special occasions. Kim Kardashian allegedly spends 2 hours every morning with a make up artist to look as polished as she does, personally I’d rather have an extra 2 hours in bed.

The worst thing about being average looking, is that it’s easy to slip down the appearance stakes and not make the most of your features, which isn’t always great for your self esteem. Even tiny changes like swapping my trainers for a pair of boots or replacing my collection of hoodies with a top and jacket now and again can elevate how I look. Throw in some mascara and a coat of lip gloss and I look like a regular grown up.

The best thing about being average looking is that now and again you get to have the wow factor. If your friends and family see you in jeans and an assortment of hoodies 99% of the time, even without hair extensions, their jaws literally drop on the days when you switch on the glamour and that’s good enough for me.

 

THE DELAY ZONE – NOT GETTING YOUR HAIR DONE ON TIME

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OK so today’s D-Day. You’ve taken your fro to the hairdressers, your hair looks amazing and you’ve had the chat about when you need to do your roots / remove your extensions / redo whatever you just had done and you nod, smile and enthusiastically agree that you’ll be back in four to six weeks or whatever the agreed timescale is. Then  you strut your way out of the salon looking amazing.

Fast forward three months and you still haven’t been back.

The Delay Zone is the gap between when you should have gone back and when you actually drag your carcass, complete with unruly afro, back to the hairdressers. There are a variety of reasons why we, OK I, don’t make it back on time.

Time Flies When You’re Looking Good

When your hair is cooperating and there is no obvious regrowth, it’s easy to lose track of how long it was since your last salon visit. Lets face it there is a certain sense of urgency when you look a mess and can’t face seeing yourself in the mirror. By the time my hair starts to give me clues that my next appointment is due, the agreed timescale is often a dim and distant memory.

Indecision / The Next Big Thing

One of the wonderful things about afro hair is that there are unlimited options. You don’t have to accept what nature gave you. If you want to change the length, colour or texture of your hair, you can. You can change your own hair or you can bury it under the hair you bought from a shop. You can have any look you like. We may not always choose the most flattering option but we’ve definitely got options. In December you were in the mood for for a full blown long luxurious weave but by the time you’re putting the next appointment in the diary you’re considering a relaxed blonde pixie cut. You can’t make the appointment until you’ve made your mind up. By the time you’ve bought some magazines, started a hair maybes board on Pinterest and discussed it with your children, your partner and ten of your friends, another fortnight has passed.

Finding A Stylist / Salon

In my last post I told you all that when it comes to my hair I only deal with two ladies. The legendary Barbara and my braid lady Lynette. If you have recently suffered a hairy horror story with a salon and don’t have a trusted stylist, then getting your hair done means finding somebody to do your hair. At this point you start talking to your friends and family which can be a quick and easy process or can feel like pulling teeth. Random Facebook posts looking for stylists can be problematic. Firstly you’ll get recommendations from people bigging up their friends regardless of their skill level. Secondly if you’ve reached the point where you are randomly asking a couple of hundred people for general advice you have clearly reached a certain level of desperation. There will be a small subset of people within your friends list that could give you useful accurate advice. This subset is probably ten percent of the list at most and there is no guarantee that those ten percent will see your post which takes you back to the rest of your Facebook friends which includes those people you hardly know, those people with totally different hair to you, the try my cousin brigade and the joker with the number one haircut who suggests that you buy some clippers.

Not everybody is as lucky as me. Not everybody has the number of a trusted stylist saved in their phone. In an ideal world by the time you are 25 you should have numbers for all the key professionals.

  • Hair Stylist
  • Decent Mechanic
  • Plumber, preferably one that deals with central heating
  • Builder. A good builder can also usually put you in touch with a good Joiner, Tiler and Electrician when needed
  • Beautician

If you have numbers for these five professionals you’ll be saved from a lot of drama in your life. The beautician may sound unnecessary but you need to be careful who you trust with your eyebrows ladies (and gentlemen) Personally I’m too lazy and cheap to spend money on somebody plucking, threading or waxing away parts of my eyebrows. Which is a fairly easy statement to make when your brows are reasonably well behaved. I’m also so busy obsessing over my hair that I don’t have time in my life, money in my purse or space in my head to obsess over my eyebrows as well.

You’re Going To That Thing

You have finally agreed that you really should take your extensions out but then you remember that you’re going to that thing.  That thing might be a wedding, a christening, a big night out or a job interview . Whatever it is, you want to look good and there is no way you are going anywhere special whilst your hair is freestyling, so you put it off for a little bit longer.

Money

Hairdos cost money and sometimes feeding and clothing your children is just more important. I’m not the only one who isn’t happy with their hair. On paper it can be difficult to justify the amount of cold hard cash we hand over to change our appearance. Black women in the United Kingdom spend a disproportionate amount of money on hair care and sometimes there is a gap between needing our hair done and earning the money to pay for it.

 

The real problems occur when you have a combination of these factors. Your hair carries on looking good so you don’t think about it which wastes a few weeks. Then  you decide on a change of style which wastes another couple of weeks. Then you finally commit to doing something but remember that you have ‘that thing’ so you delay it until afterwards but then you don’t have any money, which can delay things by anything from a couple of days to several months.

I’m sat in the Delay Zone right now. I don’t remember when I was supposed to have taken these extensions out but I do know that I am way overdue. I’m so far into the Delay Zone that I’m well on my way to the’ Scared I’m Going To Go Bald’ zone. Maybe one of the problems I have in my relationship with my hair is that in the course of a year, I spend so long in the Delay Zone that the percentage of time when I actually have “good” hair is so small that it feels none existent. It is definitely time I learnt from this.

 

NEW CLIENT SYNDROME – SALON CUSTOMER SERVICE

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I have very strong views on customer service, which almost certainly stems from spending several years as a customer service manager for a very large company, and means that whenever I come across poor customer service I notice.

There are lots of ways that hair salons can display good customer service and over the years I’ve experienced both fantastic customer service and terrible customer service. The frustrating thing is that sometimes you get both ends of the spectrum from the same salon.

New clients seem to bring out all the best and most professional service but a year later when you’re classed as a regular it can be a very different story. Instead of rewarding you for being a loyal customer some salons seem to class you as a friend they’re not that bothered about. The level of skill is exactly the same as it was a year ago but the general level of respect seems to have dipped. There are signs that you have dropped down the scale of importance, little things such as when you arrive on time but are still thumbing through the magazines an hour later.

I’m smart enough to know that hairdressers have to make conversation with clients even if they don’t really feel like it. I also know that many of them work very long hours and as such it’s perfectly reasonable that they have their mobile phones with them. It’s less reasonable that they’re so busy talking to their friends on the phone that they burn one of your ears with a set of straighteners!

I’m now at a stage with my hair where I’m not willing to take risks. My hairy horror stories post explains the background to that. In my experience one of the biggest risks to your hair is a dodgy stylist and the second is a good stylist who isn’t putting you first. I currently only ever deal with two stylists and both of these ladies consistently provide excellent customer service. The know their craft. They do excellent work. They respect my time.

I’m fairly relaxed about braiding. If somebody plaits bits of nylon into my hair, even if they do it wrong the worst that could happen is that they’ll fall out or be so tight that my head hurts. Well technically the worst that could happen is that its so tight that it makes me go bald but lets not tangent. Unlike attaching extensions with the superpower of braiding, lots of other hair treatments involve irreversible processes that rely on some very serious chemicals and when it comes to chemicals I only ever talk to one person and that person is called Barbara.

I live in a smallish village in Greater Manchester and the population isn’t particularly diverse. There are currently seven hairdressers and three barbers in the village but none of them deal with afro hair and although the number of salons has varied over the last twenty years there has always been at least five hairdressers and none of them had ever specialised in afro hair, so as you can imagine I was quite surprised one sunny afternoon when a man approached me with a business card because his wife and her friend were about to open a hair salon.

Dishing out business cards to random black women in the street didn’t feature in any of the marketing books I read during my time at university but it definitely worked in this case. As customer relationships go that random business card has led to a relationship of over fifteen years. During that time my family has grown, the salon has closed and I’ve experimented with lots of different hair styles, but Barbara still does my hair. The location may have changed but the level of customer service is exactly the same.

My ongoing battle with my natural hair and my lifelong reluctance to ever let it have it’s own way, have led me to tolerate nonsense from a long line of hairdressers on the basis that all is forgiven as long as I look amazing on my way out of the salon. The question for me now that I’m older and better able to reflect on the whole situation is – Just how much did I hate the way my hair looked when I arrived at the hairdressers, if I was willing to accept a two hour wait and burnt ears just to look great on the drive home?

 

 

 

IN DISGUISE

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For the next few days the site is going to look a little bit different.

I built this site on WordPress and there have been a couple of updates which mean that the theme which controls how this website looks has changed – and not in a good way. It’s the digital equivalent of dying your hair blonde and having it turn green!

So until I finish rebuilding it, I’m going to have to go with something safe and plainish. Technically this shouldn’t take very long but when you’re self employed you can’t leave your clients waiting whilst you update your own blog so it might take a while.

 

 

WEB DEVELOPMENT STUFF

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As I hope I’ve made fairly clear, this blog isn’t designed to offer you a host of life changing hair and beauty tips.

I build websites for a living. I offer other digital services too, but the majority of the day job is building websites for people. I retrained as a mature student a few years ago and quickly discovered that learning web development is a process that never ends. You don’t start with a list of things and when you’ve learnt them all you’re done. The things on the list change and there are always new things being invented and developed and therefore there are new items being added to the list. If you want to stay up to date you have to continually keep working. It’s a little like trying to tidy your house whilst throwing a massive house party.

I don’t believe in experimenting with the work that I do for clients and I just can’t bring myself to spend hours building imaginary websites, so the best solution appeared to be that I should create real sites that I could be creative with. Since joining the digital industry I have invested in an assortment of different tools, some I feel I’ve mastered, some were a waste of time, money and energy and have already been abandoned. There are others that I use on a regular basis without fully utilising all their capabilities. The Adobe Creative Suite falls into this bracket. Like most people I prefer to do things I’m already good at, but if you want to get good at something you have to work at it. I’m finally at a stage with the Pen Tool where I’m winning most of the time but I wanted to get better so I’ve personally created all the artwork for Suburban Afro. It’s tempting to stick to doing things you’re already quite good at but if you want to get better then you need to put the hours in, work a bit harder and show the world what you’ve been doing. Suburban Afro is a chance for me to do all that and it also gives me the chance to get all my hair complaints off my chest as a bonus.

I’m getting new ideas all the time and noticing little things on the site that I need to tweak. The look of the site will change a little over time as I adapt things but primarily it’s about experimentation. I used this blog to test things, such as uploading a site I’ve built locally, instead of always working on live installations hidden with plugins. None of these things are particularly big, but they might have been if they’d gone wrong with a client site during an installation. I’m a massive fan of WordPress but I’ve barely touched the surface so far so I’m looking forward to getting my hands dirty and doing more with it.

I have a notebook full of half written blog posts which will go live over the next few weeks and I’ll continue to work on the WordPress theme. This blog is primarily an opportunity for me to develop my digital skills but the relationship I have with my hair will always provide me with content.

 

 

 

HAIRY HORROR STORIES

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I was a child in the 1970s, so I grew up watching Charlie’s Angels with icons like Farah Fawcett and her famous flick. There were also regular adverts for Harmony hairspray, which consisted of somebody with nice straight hair flicking their head about for no obvious reason.  As far as I was concerned nice hair meant long hair and definitely not a very short afro. When I was a little girl, visits to the hairdresser were essentially going to have my hair cut very very short. The only thing I hated more than my scruffy little afro was having it cut very very short.

By the time I reached my teens and started choosing my own hair styles, I always avoided anything that involved cutting my hair any shorter, but as you may remember from my first post, I’ve tried just about every other hairdo possible. Many of those styles have reappeared time and time again, and some were done once and never tried again. My 1980s wet look perm with it’s miriad of products was quite high maintenance, which left my hair not only looking wet, but also feeling wet (and if we’re honest a bit slimey) I’m sure that most people have never tried sleeping in a  shower cap, but I’m willing to wager that the majority of people that have, were sporting a wet look perm at the time.

The idea of taking my hair all the way back to my scalp isn’t something that has ever appealed to me, so unless that changes I don’t need to worry about what’s happening under the fro. I definitely can’t ever shave my head because there is a possibility that I’ll have a scalp like Freddy Krueger, thanks to my first experience with hair relaxer. At this point you’re probably expecting me to describe the usual DIY stupidity with a home relaxer kit, but no my first experience of chemical burns was courtesy of a salon that charged me full whack!

A little tip folks, if you’re a hairdresser and your client says that her head is burning do not

  • Tell her it’s not
  • Tell her it’s only tingling
  • Leave the relaxer on for goodness knows how long, whilst she grimaces in pain
  • All of the above!

There is nothing good about standing at the bus stop on your way home from a salon, running your hands through your new hairdo and finding that your scalp is covered in scabs. I wouldn’t tolerate that kind of thing now. I’d have put my foot down when my scalp started hurting. I wouldn’t have just sat there and made the best of it. I’d have made a fuss. Fourteen year old me didn’t know any better. I just put up with it.

Deep down somewhere, forty-something year old me is still hoping that my hair will suddenly decide to change it’s genetic make up and grow differently, but until that happens I’ll continue to try an assortment of different hair styles whilst I wait for my miracle to happen. The one thing I’m quite certain of is that the very very short afro of my youth, will not be making a comeback.

 

BAD HAIR WEEK

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I’m currently having a bad hair week. Some people have bad hair days, but mine generally last at least a week.

If there was a scale of how good my hair looks where a ten is how I look when I’ve just left the hairdressers, I’m currently around a two. Last week I was a three because I could still manage a fringe with the help of the straighteners, this week I’ve dropped to a two because I can just about get all my natural hair in a bobble but not even a pair of GHD’s could get this sponge to cooperate enough to get a fringe.

I’m not particularly vain, but once I drop below a four, on the (imaginary) hair scale, I’m not myself. If I was a wealthy celebrity I’d probably have my servants covering all the mirrors, or on a bad day my mansion would be full of smashed mirrors similar to the forbidden West Wing in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. My current level of celebrity means that I just scowl when I catch sight of my reflection and there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m trapped in a bad hair week  and since my folic ugliness is generally finance related, my current period of bad hair is likely to last until I obtain a wad of cash.

There is a definite correlation between how much money I have and how bad my hair looks and how long that ugliness lasts. With the right amount of income I’d only look bad when there’s a diary issue between me and my stylist.

I’m constantly between hairdos which I’m sure some people find confusing but they’re generally too polite to ask and anybody that knows me well enough to ask, knows that the hair comes and goes so there’s no need to question it.

I’m becoming increasingly aware that my relationship with my hair isn’t a particularly good thing. I’m not setting a good example for my children by moaning every time I come face to face with my natural hair. At this stage of my life however, I’d say that I usually set my children a good example, so this one little thing shouldn’t really be an issue. I don’t smoke. I don’t do recreational drugs. I don’t even get drunk on a regular basis, so spending most of my time in hair extensions isn’t going to ban me from any Mum of the year competitions, my swearing might, but the hair thing won’t.

I’m generally very low maintenance. With the obvious exceptions of food, water and my tiny tribe of direct descendants all I really need is Lucozade and hair extensions. Ideally I’d also like access to a car or decent public transport which is required for mum stuff and for the regular 30 mile trips I have to make to buy haircare products. I understand the forces of retail but travelling into central Manchester everytime I want to buy a conditioning pack or a decent shampoo is inconvenient to say the least, but that’s another blog post.

 

 

HELLO FROM THE SUBURBAN AFRO

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As a rule of thumb my natural hair journey is me travelling as far as humanly possible away from my natural hair.

I spent most of my childhood daydreaming about having long straight hair and most of my adulthood experimenting with every kind of hairdo. I’ve been permed, relaxed, weaved and braided but when the chemicals wear off and the extensions are removed I’m back to spending time with my nemesis. My natural hair. Every time I look in the mirror my unruly, unattractive, uneven afro waves back at me.

In the grand scheme of things the ongoing battle I have with my fro isn’t a big deal, but it definitely bothers me more than any of my other imperfections. Perhaps because it’s more visible to the world, but more likely it’s because I decided at a very young age that this ugly looking sponge was just not for me and I’ve spent so much time and money trying to fight nature and losing. Mother nature has been consistently kicking my backside for the last 44 years and will quite rightly continue to do so.

So why have I decided to start a blog about my hair? Am I on some sort of journey? Do I feel inspired by people like Jamelia who have abandoned their weaves in order to embrace their natural hair? Have I finally come to accept the inevitability of the situation? Nope. I build websites for a living and needed material for a development blog site I’m experimenting with. I work a lot better if I’m dealing with real work so I decided to combine that, with my never ending hair whinges and write occasional blog posts about my frizzy nemesis. I have an afro and I live in the suburbs and long after I’ve moved onto my next digital project I will continue to be “The Suburban Afro”