Aibu to abandon my beliefs to get ahead. Afro hair.

[ShortFro]

Aibu to abandon my beliefs to get ahead. Afro hair.

NC

The majority of black women you see in the uk do not actually have their real hair on display. Often only other black women will be able to tell.

For many reasons (I’ll expand) but largely due to setting an example to my daughter, I’ve worn my hair in its natural state for the last few years.
Obviously I’m not Lupita the Oscar winner (!) but it looks something like this.

(Lupita pic)

I have noticed that I am treated differently with my hair like this. Often ignored/ followed in shops etc. Please don’t tell me I’m imagining this. There are probably millions of posts on the internet talking about this.

I hate being treated like this, told I look ‘unprofessional now’ etc. My hair is always clean & cut professionally - it’s just not processed in the way most people are used to.

Options.

1. Keep it as it is, be often treated badly. Miss out on opportunities. Be true to myself.

1. Wigs = conform to the ‘accepted’ standard. But they are itchy and hot plus it is mortifying if they come off.

1. Weaves - this is what the majority do. This is expensive. To get it done professionally = £200 every 6 weeks. I can’t afford this without serious cuts to the budget elsewhere.

Plus: using human hair, I find the thought of having somebody’s hair in my head repulsive and skin crawling. On the ethical side, many women are exploited to get that hair.

There is synthetic hair but this often looks ‘wiggy’ and fake, like a barbies hair.

When doing weaves on a long term basis the hairline is often damaged.

Even if the photos of Naomi are doctored, I have seen in real life hundreds of women in salons with this problem. The ‘baby hair’ along the airline cannot support a weave, resulting in tension alopecia.

1. Braids. You are facing the same hairline issues as with weaves. You are looking at £50 every 6 weeks plus around 6 hours. In addition I find that they look TO ME silly and overly fussy.

1. Relaxer. This is a process where you take the contents of a box that says ‘caution, use gloves, do not allow to touch skin’ and put that on your head. You can do it yourself like with hair dye or pay around £200 every 6 weeks for professional maintenance. That looks like this

Also, make sure you never get rained on or sweat or it will become Afroish.

1. Long natural hair straightened with straightners... hours and hours of work weekly plus any time it happens to get damp...

What the fuck do I do?

I work in the City of London with locks. Working in a legal department of a professional services business.
Been working in the West End before that with locks in law firms.
I wore extensions for 7 years before taking the plunge in 2005.

I'm sorry this is an issue for you. But sometimes I think we make it more of an issue than it actually is. White people generally don't care about us - really, it's true, they have a tendency to just live their lives and not think about us, not all but most. They can be curious about our hair and will ask questions (some are stupid and touch first, but most don't make that mistake more than once). There will be that old doddery fool or young buck with pre-conceived ideas. Thinking Halle Berry and Lenny Henry is about as black as we get.

Of course I can't say your experiences are not true, of course they are your experiences. But I'll tell you when I first loxed up and got on the train for work a young lady asked me where I got my hair done and how much etc (the usual), I told her and encouraged her. She said she couldn't cause she worked in the City and in her job, blah di blah di blah (remember I was working in the West End then), then 2 years later (presumably she changed jobs or just noticed that more and more people were wearing their hair that way), she had hers done too. And it looked fab. She also looked happy (could be my imagination, but going natural, weaveless and extensionless was like liberty).

Do what you want with your hair. It's yours. I don't think it's as big a deal as you think it is though, in the workplace.

Keep it as it is. Like you say it’s pretty unusual for people not to process their hair these days and I think that makes natural curls look even more striking. It’s rare these days even to see natural Caucasian curls that haven’t been tonged to the hilt!
I also love how afro textured hair looks slicked back with a full, curly ponytail if it’s long enough.
I’m sorry you are experiencing racism but racists will be racist regardless of your hair. They may just hide it better if you look like you’ve got a fair bit of cash that they want you to spend!

That’s so depressing to read.

Would wearing more makeup be any better as an option? I’m just thinking it might help with the looking more ‘groomed’ thing.

omg.... Who exactly ... told you that you look unprofessional now ???

Could you go for neat dreads and keep them shoulder length (when they eventually get that long)?

I forgot to add locs to the list. I had locs for a short time. I swim so much they started to get musty as they never fully dried so I cut them. Sisterlocks are the alternative (thinner, interlocked locs) but I’ve been quoted £800 to start them an 6 weeks maintenance 2/3 hrs at £100 min a go. No thanks.

There are some mnetters who also say they perceive them as dirty (previous thread) while this is not true it is a widespread misconception.

I'm sorry I have no idea, it's so miserable that you are put in this position. For what it's worth, I'd say stick to what you believe, but then it isn't me in that situation so I don't really know.
BUT have you come across Grace Barrett? She now works with teenagers in the self-esteem team and her big thing (one of them) is about Afro hair and how it's ridiculous to suggest that it's not professional when it's just your natural hair!

Your hair is perfectly professional as it is and you shouldn't have to essentially torture yourself to meet shitty western standards. The more natural women around the better.

I'm (white) and well aware about black women wearing wigs or weaves. This thread has been eye opening about the costs though.

I don't know what I would do. I wonder if a headband co ordinating your outfit would help with the professional thing? Sounds so silly though. What kind of outfit do you wear to work?

I'd say natural if you can and heat style as and when you want to or you feel its required.

Who is telling you you look unprofessional? Our company lawyer has natural hair and she looks awesome and incredibly professional.

"Would wearing more makeup be any better as an option? I’m just thinking it might help with the looking more ‘groomed’ thing."

£800 is extreme (in one hit). The last time I heard was £400. Find out how much a trainee costs. Or fork out the £800, and use a trainee for retightening. If your hair is not very long it shouldn't cost £100 to retighten. Mine costs £90 (£100 with hair detox and tip) and after 6 months you can learn to maintain it yourself. I've saved myself a fortune over the last 13 years. I go twice a year for a touch up.

My mum got hers done in another country and gets them retightened here. Defintely a lot cheaper. However, yes if you have thick, long ahir like mine (navel length), drying it is a pain.

Of course there are white women on here saying they experience the same. Of bloody course there are.

Sheeshaz
To just brush Afro hair to put it in a neat pony tail could take an hour a day to just comb it through. And you have to use plenty of product on it. There are YouTube videos of how to brush Afro hair.

ShortFro
I’m white so I may be way off here. Could you mix it up a bit. Maybe have a shortish relatively low maintenance Afro and wear a wig some of the time. That way you could have bad hair days and the wig would last longer.

If you change hairstyles in this way, do you think perhaps you may get noticed by management, which is not always a bad thing instead of just blending into the background like everyone else?

I know you don’t like the idea of wigs but for me that would be the easiest although itchy / hot and potentially of dubious source. I just googled ethically sourced wigs and came up with a number of hits. I can, however, imagine the cost of one will dent hair styling cash for a protracted period.

I was truly trying to be helpful, Deafly

I should have added bloody hell the costs are eye watering and it is terrible in this day and age you feel you can’t choose how to have your hair.

I am not sure how a white woman can empathise with what you are saying. As a senior black woman in the city, I can genuinely say I understand.

My friend went from long relaxed hair to long natural hair, she blow drys it hot and it looks gorgeous. I’m not sure what industry you are in or which town but there’s no way in my industry this would be an issue. I certainly would not judge a woman for having natural hair.

I'm so sorry that racism is so prevalent in society still. I had no idea. Do men face the same, obviously not the same extent, but is natural hair specifically frowned upon for women or both sexes?

Who told you you looked unprofessional? Was it someone you worked with? What colour was their skin? Were they Male or female?

This is so unacceptable in today's society, that who said this is important to contextualise.

This must be a pain in the arse.

If i had afro hair ì think i would do braids or dreadlocks.

Onviously the decision to keep your hair natural or not is yours.
For the sake of the discussion, if I had to choose from the options you listed I think I would go with heat straighteners, and if I wasn’t good at it I would try the relaxer (but from a salon, not at home)

Being mixed raced I’m very close to a lot of black women and I don’t agree that the majority of black women wear weaves at all. Some are natural, some chemically straighten, some wear braids, some are wedded to their GHDs. Most people would probably think my cousins who are full black are wearing weaves but they use hair straighteners and have long thick hair. They do spend a lot at the hairdressers on conditioning treatments though.

Black women vary. A lot.