You know that air that naturalistas walk around with? The “I’m beautiful and  comfortable in my own skin and hair and I have found myself” air? I have nothing against it. I find myself guilty of it sometimes. But it only tells half of the story.

I have a love-hate relationship with my natural hair. 10 months post the Big Chop, I have found myself thinking about my ‘happier’ relaxer days a bit more often than I should. And while I have really learned to love and manage my kinky head, I have thought some very bad things. HAHA. Here are a few things I hate about (my) natural hair.
1.     SHRINKAGE is a b**** that is extremely hard to tame.
2.     My life depends on bobby pins. Afros are quite voluminous, and since I do not fancy gels to sleek back hair, I have found that my life comes to a standstill when I can’t find my bobby pins or have run out of them. I mean, there’s got to be more to life than bobby pins!
3.    My hair is at that awkward stage where it is not short enough to wear a neat wash n go, but not long enough to tie into a pony. So I sometimes wear it in puffs which are hard to hold because of how thick my hair is.
4.    Single Strand Knots (SSK)
5.    I hate that for every bottle of shampoo I go through, I go through 10 bottles of conditioner. I’m not even kidding. I have had the same bottle of shampoo all year and it’s not even half way done; I can’t count the bottles of conditioner that I’ve been through. I even started buying the large value bottles.
6.    The silk scarf we wear to sleep to protect our locks is really unsexy.
7.    FRIZZ!

FRIZZ: turning beautiful twist outs and straw sets into a nappy mess since forever.

8.    It takes a whole lot of time to take care of natural hair. I literally set aside a whole day to do my hair on deep condition days. Plus doing small braids as part of my no-heat-straightening regimen takes forever. Such a pain.
9.     African hair (especially my 4C) is naturally drier than other hair types. Now thrown in colour treated hair and you have dry and brittle hair giving straw a run for its money.
10.   A gazillion people asking questions and wanting to touch your hair. I realise that most people do it out of qenuine curiosity and fascination, but it is still really annoying getting questions like why your hair is longer today than it was yesterday (shrinkage problems), and “Can I touch it”. Even my good friends do it. I try to just smile and wave.