Natural hair is hair that has not been straightened using chemical relaxers.
Black
people all naturally have very curly or kinky hair. Traditionally black
communities worldwide have aspired to have straight hair. This was
initially achieved by using very hot metal combs; however, in the early
1970s, hair straightening chemicals known as "relaxers" were made
commercially available and became the norm.
Where there are black
people you will almost always find boxed chemical relaxers or "creamy
crack" as some in the African-American community like to call relaxers.
Relaxers are not addictive in themselves but usage of them has tended to
be.
In recent times, there has been a large movement of people
rejecting relaxers and maintaining their "natural" coily or kinky hair.
The decision to stop using hair relaxers and to maintain natural hair is
called "going natural."
The reasons for going natural are
manifold: some do it "just because", others go natural for a change in
hairstyle or because they feel that prolonged use of relaxers has caused
damage to their hair and yet others do it as a way to reject
Eurocentric standards of beauty and embrace a more diverse Afrocentric
take on beauty.
Those with natural hair categorize it using a number and letter system.
Most black people fall into the categories 3C, 4A, 4B, and 4C.
Completely straight hair as found on some Asian and Caucasian heads is
type 1 - this is the only category that is not subdivided by the letters
A, B and C.
The higher the number and the letter the more coily
or kinky the hair is. Hair that is classified within the same category
will tend to respond in a similar fashion to given styling methods and
to specific products. These categories serve only as a guide as a single
head can have several "types" of hair on it.
Natural haired
people do sometimes straighten their hair for variety but always using a
temporary method such as a blow dryer and ceramic straighteners. Once
the hair is re-wet it reverts back to its naturally coily or curly
state.
The large swathes of people that have made the decision to
go natural are referred to as being in the "natural hair community". If a
year could be placed on when "going natural" went mainstream or became
very popular it would probably be 2009 in the USA and perhaps 2011/2012
in the UK. There were many people going natural prior to these years,
however, in 2009 in particular many "naturals" took to YouTube and began
documenting their "natural hair journey" through video logs or vlogs.
Many
black girls have never had to manage their natural hair. As soon as
their mother allowed it, they would start using relaxer. The corollary
of this is that many people have to learn how to deal with curly hair
from scratch. Natural hair behaves very differently to relaxed hair. The
knowledge gap is now being filled by the many blogs and vlogs that can
easily be found on the web.
The natural hair movement has led to
some conflict within the black community as some see it as being
divisive. Some naturals see their decision to go natural as being almost
spiritual and as such they do try to convince those with relaxed hair
to go natural as well.
