Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Weaving a sense of Self-Worth


By Mary-Jane Mabula

I spent the first 18 years of my life without braiding or having hair extension on. This was a result of church rules and regulations. One commandment that many churches insist on, until the pastor’s wife wants to explore with long hair too. When I grew up weave was wicked and slutty. The nature of the community that my parents bordered me with believed that weave, eyelashes, nail polish, make up are all Satan’s creations.
Now at 23, I am recovering my hairline after I became a slave to weave and braiding since 2010. I began university with my well groomed black afro yet a few months in. I wanted to belong, fit in with my friends who had R400 razor cuts or “Rihanna style” as Ntate Chomane Chomane of Lesedi FM once referred to on one of his rants about hair on radio.

I still had to avoid going to my parent’s house with weave on. I remember once I had just put on a R300 hairpiece on coupled with eyelashes and it turned out I had an interview back at home in the Free State. The struggle of taking the hair off and the amount of money wasted it was painful to me.

Sitting here and trying to understand how weave and all beautifying things got so addictive is a mystery. Reality is I am not alone. An amount of South African young women bear this sickness of not feeling beautiful without all the artificial hair  us.

It is 2014, I am a professional young lady, living and working in a city that discriminates against those who wear “dituku” and long dresses. I believe this addiction that I and many of young women have is because of so many factors that date back to the slavery time. I cannot duel on those factors that even in modern society still tell an average black girl she’s not good looking without some Indian girl’s hair on her head.

It is imperative for us women not to overlook ourselves. I lost the meaning of what beauty is. What being African means. What means to be me without the weave? The need to have weave on clouded my vision of who I am.

I am 25 days into my no weave mission and it has been a journey. Some mornings I wake up wishing I had weave just to brush it and go. Some mornings I wake up to see my roommate slave away the morning trying to straighten it out to my entertainment. Most days it is great fun to laugh at my colleagues using pens to stretch their scalps. Sometimes it is depressing to be given less attention by the opposite sex because I do not look approachable enough. None the less brown sister with nappy hair you are beautiful.