Don’t touch my hair
When it’s the feelings I wear
Don’t touch my soul
When it’s the rhythm I know
Don’t touch my crown …
Don’t touch my pride
They say the glory’s all mine–Solange (“Don’t Touch My Hair”)
It is a great time to be a melanin poppin’, Black girls rockin’, natural hair slayin’ Black queen. Yes, we coming into a time when we feel more confident in celebrating who we are, what we have to offer society and glorifying our natural tresses. Yes…kinky, curly, or nappy, the hair that crowns your head is your glory.
For so long, Black women have been made to feel as if the hair they were born with was not good enough. We have been taught to idolize perfectly straight or slightly curly Caucasian hair. With hair described as fluffy cotton, like that our ancestors used to pick under the blazing sun beating down on them with slave masters lashing their scarred brown skin or tight coils highly prone to shrinkage, sisters of colors had been taught that wearing their natural hair was not professional. Forget donning twists or braids, that was considered not a finished hairstyle and was unacceptable.
Step into 2017! Black women are boasting an unapologetic boldness in accepting who they are. Our quest for individuality and healthy hair care regimens causes more and more Black women to embrace their God-given textures. Companies like Heat Free Hair help to explore versatile ways to wear black hair. A wildly popular community of women who crave knowledge about healthy hair and protective styles has emerged on virtually every social media outlet. This further encourages Black women to celebrate their fabulous, natural textures with ease.
“How To Get Away With Murder” aired a scene where Viola Davis stripped herself down emotionally and physically by removing her makeup and wig on prime time TV as if to say, “Here I am, raw and natural.” We have come a long way from the days around the turn of the century when Madam C. J. Walker had to travel from town to town empowering women through innovative hair care regimes on her way to being touted as the first self-made female millionaire, to now where video tutorials of growing and maintaining natural manes can be found with ease at our fingertips.
The world now knows what we have always known, natural hair does not equate to an angry Black woman mentality. This Black History Month, let us celebrate new history being made every day! Let us take pride in the seriously sexy kinks and coils that have reawakened a sense of pride in Black women.
Solange performs “Don’t Touch My Hair” at Super Bowl Live in Houston.
