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The Naturalistas logo. It represents different types of Natural Afro textured hair and the women who aim to eradicate lack of knowledge about how to do our own hair.

Several years before the thought of being some sort of Natural hair “expert” ever crossed my mind (and years before being natural became the “in” thing to do) I repeatedly found myself in situations where people would come to me for advice on their hair regardless if they were natural or not.* People asked how to get their hair thick like mine, how to grow it long, what shampoos they should use, if mayonnaise is a good conditioner,  the list is endless. I don’t think anyone ever thought of me as an expert, but my hair must have spoke volumes, serving as a kind of proof that I was doing something right. Most often, all I could tell people was what I did. I never gave much thought until the end of my pregnancy with my son. I was homebound and thus spent endless hours on natural hair websites to keep me from going stir crazy. In fact, I didn’t begin seriously document my hair growth until I was pregnant. I suppose I literally had nothing better to do. My regimen at that time consisted of daily co-washing with an Herbal Essence chosen simple because it smelled good. I washed my hair every so often with an ACV rinse to cleanse it. But other than that, there was no serious thought to it. I wasn’t hung up on ingredients and pH balances or even how to style my natural hair. I was the queen of the two strand twist and that was that.

Since that time, I’ve locked my hair twice, dyed and cut it once. I didn’t have any particular goal in mind so long as my hair stayed natural. In September of 2009, Chris-Tia E. Donaldson sent me a free copy of her book,Thank God I’m Natural to review. I was locking my hair at the time and didn’t get around to seriously looking at in until that November. But when I did, it changed my life. I realized I had the potential to take my hair to next level if I wanted to and the point that there WAS even a next level was news to me. I had been natural, no chemicals, barely ever using heat, and that was that. But TGIN enlightened me to the reasons it was useful to be concerned with the ingredients of products we put in our hair, that natural hairstyling could be easy and fun, and the “journey” of natural hair was all about what you made it.

Almost immediately, I combed out my locs in realization that I constantly attempted to loc my hair out of a feeling of not know what to do next with it. I now had options and my drive for natural hair was renewed.  But more than styling and playing in my hair, I began to realize this fight that so many of us have with whether or not to be natural was not simply about lack of styling options. It was more so about lack of knowledge of how to care for our hair in it’s natural state. It took for me to read a book to figure out what was lacking in caring for my hair.

What we do with our hair serves generally as a means to communicate something about ourselves to others without saying a word. Hair is an aesthetic. It is on display. If we are to consider that, generally, as African descended persons, we destroy our hair’s natural state to intentionally alter it so it does not reflect our DNA we should experience cognitive dissonance. Our DNA is coded to have kinks and curls and coils. Yet we do everything in our power to fight against it. What is the message that we are trying to communicate? With Naturalistas, I aim to not only address the usual Natural Hair “how-to” this that and the other but to also bring to the table the discussion of what is really going on that today, in the 21st century, we still hate our hair. We risk 3rd degree burns and blindness just to not have our hair in it’s natural texture. But, also in this same 21st century, we do all sorts of damage to our physical body via lack of exercise, ingestion of poisonous foods but convenient foods and sitting on our butts all day, working for someone else with the aim to save up enough to spend a week or to away from that someone else. We also damage our psyche by feeding it junk in the form of television, trashy novels, gossip and social networking sites where we stare at other peoples photos wishing we could have what they have or believing we’re so much better because we’ve yet to get as fat as they did.

At the center of Naturalistas is natural hair, caring for it, maintaining it, helping it to thrive. But being a Naturalista is so much more. It is about lifestyle change. It is about changing our diets permanently to show that we care for our body much in the same we do our hair. It is about finding ways to create more positive vibrations in our daily life so as to eliminate stress and anxiety in order to make room for opportunity and happiness. Being a Naturalista is about allowing our natural inclinations to live a joyous life, to embrace who we are naturally, and to simple breathe easier which every breath.
I am just a single woman, but with your help, I aim to show the world how fulfilling it is to be a Naturalista.

*My expertise comes in the form of providing a critical dialog on cultural contexts.

Naturalistas Logo by George Gabe Gonzalez is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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