NASH: Hair Tales
Muse and model: Nashley
Black girls. Our black girls. Whose bodies never forgot stories that the hands and eyes of the world inscribed on them. The girls who grew into loving their thick hair. Who could cut right through your heart with their unnerved looks. They wore hair-bows, puffs, and ponytails to school because their mother needed to work that morning and didn’t have time to style them.
Her hair was never a playground for anyone’s hands; her heart alarmed her of a lie right after you told it. Don’t touch her hair or ask about the length of her nails. Don’t question why a smile is missing from her face. She hears you talking, it’s just going through one earring and out the other.
Black girls knew the warmth that existed between a woman’s legs before anyone else. It was their seat. The same way boys familiarized themselves with the rugged texture of a worn-out barbershop chair. They knew just how stern and gentle a mother’s hands could be. They were familiar with both her caress and discipline. This was how they learned to never play with her as well as when to retreat to her embrace.
The beauty store was like a protected ground to me. I was always greeted with the scent of gels, balms, and butters. Afros and slick hair on containers. Mannequins adorned in wigs colored with tones that most didn’t know hair could come in. Boys would see them and fearfully hide behind their mother’s legs. Here, women touched hearts and minds through voluntary tales of the combative nature of their hair and trying to “tame” it. I go there often now.
Even as a child I realized the tenderness of a woman’s head and hair. As well as its undying essence. Anything for it couldn’t be used for everything else, and everything it did everyone else’s hair wasn’t able to. The exclusivity of black hair is what we all love. Most men never know what their beard needs until a woman tells them.
Styling gel, bonnets, rollers, and flat irons. “Boy I just got my hair done” was always the warning. These things are customary to my story as a black boy. This is why a black woman will always be my home.
I like to believe that women uniquely enkindle intimacy when styling each other’s hair. They put so much love into their tresses and curls, which is probably why they don’t play when it comes to where you put your hands. Hours of love and care; doubt and self-consciousness.
What you see was what she had to convince herself, in her heart, that it didn’t matter what you thought of.
Now, I strangely understand why every other day someone is complaining about how unbefitting a hairstylist can be. A black woman’s hair carries stories the same way her body does. Locs, short cuts, curls, and even those who’ve intentionally cut their hair, or have allowed the hands of life to do with it what it will; a woman’s narrative is woven with the story of her hair. Even if it’s gone, her heart is still thinking of her next style.
Told by: Kwon
