Nappturology 101

It’s with a heavy heart that I write this. Poor some extra virgin olive oil out for my niece’s hair. About six weeks ago she came over with straight hair. I just thought she got her hair flat ironed. Yesterday, she showed up with very, silky straight hair. Today, we were watching a movie together, and she was propped up on a pillow on the sofa, and I was sitting right behind her. There was a very familiar smell wafting up from her hair that made me raise a brow. I just kept looking at the top of her head, and I sniffed at her hair. Then it clicked, so I touched her hair, and asked her if she’d gotten a r.elaxer.

She turned around quickly and said, “I thought I told you that a long time ago that I got a chemical fire cream.” Now, I’m surprised at my reaction, cause I flicked her hair out of my hand and replied, “No, you didn’t tell me that you’d gotten a r.elaxer. I knew it was flat ironed. You never said you had a r.elaxer.”

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Ok… first things first. My apologies for not posting anything since April. Lots and lots of stuff on my plate right now and most recently my 2nd laptop finally died so getting ANY kinda online time is a huge challenge right now.

That said, I’ve got plenty of hair stuff to write about, so much so, that it’s hard to know where to start. But I think the biggest thing is that about two months ago, I finally did the deed. I colored my hair. If you’re a member on either my hair board cNappymeNow.com on NP, you may be a bit familiar with how I feel about my gray hair — in short, I hate it. Mostly because it looks like lint. Nothing at all attractive about scattered gray, nappy hair that looks like lint. Nope…uh uh. If it were closer to being all gray perhaps I’d like it better. But as of this moment in time, and for quite a while now, I’ve just been wanting it gone.

Didn’t color it earlier was cause, well, I really didn’t want to deal with the maintenance of it all, plus, there’s always the chance that color can damage your hair. But one day, I looked in the mirror and said enough and purchased a color called Brazen Bronze.

Ha! The word BRAZEN should have been the first clue. Boy did it turn out brazen. To top it all off, me and my friend had no clue what we were doing, exactly, and we ended spending too much time applying it to the front and didn’t work it through to the back. So when all was said and done, the back was much darker than the front. The back is actually the way I wanted my hair to look all over.

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Ok… I know I said I was done trying to educate my niece. But today, she was sitting in a chair, and so I had a bird’s eye view of her hairline. She’s taller than me now so I don’t often get to see the top of her head anymore. And just what did I see? Some very, very thin edges. Now here’s the thing. I had a heart-to-heart talk with her last fall and told her to stop wearing those damned elastic hair bands around her edges. She was using them to hold her edges down AND as a fashion statement. Cute yes, but very detrimental to her hairline as well.

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Her length totally bites the dust!

First though, can we all just have a moment of silence as we mourn for my niece’s hair. Sadly, she’s at that age, where peer pressure and being very cute is much more important than protecting her length. Over the winter, I’d been noticing that her hair was looking shorter and shorter. Then one day, I stretched one of her twists down her back and it was a good FOUR inches above her bra strap. 

See that shorter twist? That’s about the longest length of her hair now. Maybe just a little longer than that but not by much…

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So while I’m mourning the loss of my niece’s length, my hair is on the serious grow. At the moment, I’m done putting energy into my niece’s nappy education, (I’ll pray that my sis doesn’t give into the lye, but like I said in my previous post, I think it’s just a matter of time) so from here on out, I’m going to focus soley on my own nappy journey. Lead by example cause somebody’s gotta represent the nap around here…right?!!!

That said, here’s my latest update!

The next time I check in, I’ll be posting starting pics of my upper layers. Sometime later this week, I’m, going to have my beautician dust my upper layers and trim my BSL layer to get rid of my ratty ends. Since I’m going for a specific shape, I can’t trust myself to trim my own hair any longer. My beautician did a good job last year when she shaped it up so I have to cross my fingers that she’ll do EXACTLY what I want again. I’ll keep letting her shape it periodically. At this point, I’m after thickness and fullness and I think keeping it trimmed as I continue to rid myself of layers will be the key to achieving this goal.

I also think I’ve found a protective style that doesn’t involve a head full of twists. On detangled, stretched hair it only takes about 10 minutes to do. Yep that’s right…only 10 minutes. I’ll try to get a pic of it sometime this week. I REALLY like it. Sure in the heck beats having to do a 5-hour styling marathon, I’ll tell ya. I having long hair!

Oh…  I came back to give y’all something to drool over. Those of you with tightly coiled, no wave or curl definition nappy cNapp textured hair will really be able to appreciate a trip to these albums. My absolute favorite is Sera252. Take a look see at all of them and enjoy!

http://public.fotki.com/Sera252/
http://public.fotki.com/Poetist/
http://public.fotki.com/Ccarylb/
http://members.fotki.com/Bright–Eyes/about/
http://public.fotki.com/bostonsis/
http://public.fotki.com/okorolina40/
http://members.fotki.com/mnmtsh002/about/
http://public.fotki.com/HoneyKiss/
http://public.fotki.com/cher79/
http://public.fotki.com/hrshyqutie2/
http://public.fotki.com/Querida/