For years, she did everything she could to transform her frizzy hair into a mane of smooth, wavy locks. But at the age of thirty, Agnes Hofman – of Brazilian descent – has had enough. “I have come to love my hair. And, interestingly enough, myself more.”
Cosmopolitan 8, 2010
It happened like this. My last weave didn’t look good anymore. But I didn’t have time to spend a day at the hairdresser – because that’s how long it takes to get cornrows (thin braids, tight to the head) made and then have strips of fake hair woven into them.
With caps, scarves and headbands on my head, the months fly by. Before I know it, I've been walking around with my Brazilian hair for not two months, but half a year. When I finally get to the hair salon and my Nigerian occasional hairdresser (my regular hairstylist is in Angola and no one else dares) very loudly announces that I've been walking around with my weave for too long, I start to get seriously worried.
Especially since she hisses demonstratively and calls the owner, who taps his wrist with his finger and grabs a pair of household scissors: “Sorry lady, time is money. We have to cut the weaves out.” Protectively, I slam my hands on my head. With tears welling up in my eyes, I shout: “Noooo, not my hair!”
And so, thanks to fate and a somewhat aggressive hairdresser, I have come to love my own hair. And, interestingly enough, myself more. I recognize myself in the statement made by rapper/actor Ice-T in Chris Rock's documentary Good Hair: women with a weave show off other people's feathers. I have done that too. But why? To be someone I am not? A better version of myself? But who decides that? Others or myself?
Exotic attraction
I think the answer is a combination of those elements. For years I wanted to be someone I wasn't, namely a white girl with good hair. Because good hair, I didn't have that, my mother always said. By that she meant that the curl was too strong and that it was unmanageable without expensive products and a lot of care.
Always after washing she would take the baby oil, comb my hair vigorously and I would get two braids. Like a kind of Afro Pippi I would hop through the Betuwe countryside. In the hamlet where I grew up I was seen as an exotic attraction.
Curly control
I remember that time when I was 11 years old, I went to play tennis with a real sweatband around my head. This is the eighties, so I was all fashionable. The night before, I had made eight braids with utmost concentration. All by myself, with lots of oil. I slept with them, so that the next day I would not have frizzy, but wavy locks. It was the tournament of the year, with a BBQ to close the season. Finally I would have hair that would dance on my shoulders instead of that static frizz or those two stupid braids.
I waved goodbye to my father, who was washing the car. I kept a close eye on the garden hose. Moisture is fatal because of the risk of frizz. It wouldn't bother me... I tried to get away as quickly as possible. In vain: the cold drops fell from the garden hose onto my head. No dancing hair, but the hairdo of a troll. Two years later I bought my first Dark & Lovely kit - a chemical 'relaxer' to defrizz my hair - and joined the order of dark women who only want one thing: good hair.
Naive white friends
The step to a weave was only small. First a half, where I only had a few rows of hair sewn to the bottom and draped my own locks over it, but soon I took a full weave for 500 euros. I felt like a diva, a princess, a supermodel, a real vamp. My mother was emotional that her daughter was so beautiful. And things were going well with the flirting. More than ever, the shopping street was my catwalk.
Dancing, flirting and even sex is better with fake hair, although there are also disadvantages to a weave. Especially with white boyfriends, who naively think it is your own hair. And to your annoyance want to caress your head. The first time he dares, you slap his hands out
'shyness' gently away. The second time, his hands go to your hips under your guidance, but on his third attempt, you are roughly the loser. You feel pressure on your scalp. His fingertips press against the cornrows in which your fake hair is sewn. There are a few variations on his remark, but in almost all cases a serious conversation follows. You should always be careful with this, to avoid the remark 'Oh, I didn't know you were so insecure'. That always irritates me. Because almost all men look at women with an artificial front and/or buttocks, but I - his object of affection - have to be completely natural.
Worrying at the dressing table
Looking back, I think my desire to have white hair stems from the fact that I was told for years that I was different, not like the masses. Instead of embracing that, I tried to fit in. Not because I wasn’t proud of my Brazilian roots, on the contrary. But as a teenager, I didn’t want to stand out anymore, not be an exception. And not be judged for it either. That color was bad enough as far as swear words were concerned, and then I was also the tallest in the class. And yes, then in this white society I chose the white half in me.
As if I had to choose a side at all. And only now, at thirty, do I finally realize that I don't have to.
My maternal grandfather was Brazilian
cowboy and as black as soot, while my Dutch
grandfather on daddy's side, dressed in a suit, worked as a lawyer at a ministry. I unfortunately never got to meet either of them, but I recently wondered what they would think if they saw me brooding at my dressing table. One preached freedom, the other justice. And I, their granddaughter, have been limited my entire life by those curls on my head.
As far as I'm concerned, that's it.
Not because my date confessed to finding me super sexy with my real hair ('You're just like Erykah Badu') and also not because I am now radically choosing my black side. No, I am choosing myself and although I still have to get used to that enormous forest of curls every day, I am slowly starting to love them. Because they are just like me, strong, stubborn and untamable.
Agnes Hofman, a writer by profession, was one of the panel members during the Sabi Wiri Weekend. Click here for more about the writer .