Before We Become Extinct: How Do I Get the Confidence to Wear My Natural Woolly Hair?

By D.U. Okonkwo and T. C. OKONKWO

Have I believed a lie about my woolly hair?

Does a negative attitude toward my hair send out a message?

Have I considered the health dangers of not wearing my wool?

What's love got to do with it?

How to take back my freedom

7 steps to wool confidence

How does exercise and nutrition help me to embrace my wool?

   (With expert nutritional advice to help you)

 

Before We Become Extinct 

THE No.1 EMPOWERMENT TOOL FOR THE WOOLLY SISTER WANTING TO TAKE THAT STEP TO FREEDOM. ​

Let's unleash...

#THEPUREWOOL

 

About the Book

I sling my bag over my shoulder. "I'm off now; see you later!"

She hurries towards me, eyebrows furrowing in disbelief. "You're going out like that?" she hisses.

"Like what?" I reply, quickly giving myself a once-over in the corridor mirror.

She stills; "Aren't you going to cover your hair? It's not done. Let me get you a scarf." She begins to look around frantically.

Confused, I run a hand over the soft bounciness of my tight curls. With that just-washed fragrance that I love, my hair looks lovely to me. "My hair is done; it comes out of my head done, in ready-styled, tight curls", I explain.

"You can't go out like that", she insists, her eyes widening in sheer horror. "What will people think?"

 

Coiled hair, coarse hair, kinky hair, often mislabelled "bad hair", many sisters have grown up being told that the very hair that comes out of their head simply isn't good enough. As a result, many have openly confessed to a struggle to embrace the very look of their natural woolly hair throughout most of their lives, and knowingly or not, have denied themselves one of the most basic and fundamental of human freedoms. Thankfully, as the truth becomes more and more apparent that the beautifully powerful and exceptionally versatile natural woolly hair is indeed the original, and needs to be displayed, not hidden, hopefully dialogues like the one above will quickly become a thing of the past.

Issues in life revolve around lies and truth, and this natural woolly hair issue is no exception. In BEFORE WE BECOME EXTINCT – How Do I Get the Confidence to Wear My Natural Woolly Hair?, sisters T.C. and D.U. Okonkwo will explore this issue in order to answer this often-unspoken question. They will share profound insights into the link between love, lies, fear and rejection, since these underpin the struggle many sisters have with embracing this unique and exceptional aspect of their beauty.

If you struggle to confidently display your natural woolly hair – perhaps you used to wear it but now feel the pressure to hide it – or if indeed the very idea of displaying your woolly hair makes you feel anxious and fretful, this book is for you. It encourages you to dig deep and consider for yourself the answers to many of the questions posed, and to use the answers as fuel for empowerment, to ultimately free yourself from this woolly hair issue, and more importantly… stay free.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AFWP
• Release date: Aug 9, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386690467

D.U. Okonkwo

D. U. Okonkwo was born and raised in London. An avid reader from childhood, she began writing her own stories at the age of ten. She holds a BSc Hons degree in Business with Spanish, and is currently working on her second novel. For more information, visit: www.duokonkwo.com

Book preview

Introduction

Why extinct? Because the word extinct refers to something that is no longer seen, has vanished, or is no longer in existence. This has been the case, at least in recent years, for the original and authentic look of us black women with woolly hair. Family, friends, significant others, and those we generally interact with, have been known, on many occasions, to express their distaste for the look of woolly hair on women, causing many of us to internalize the erroneous message that our woolly hair is unattractive. Additionally, our lack of representation within what we would term the mainstream beauty spaces, where female beauty is typically showcased – health, beauty and fashion magazines, billboards, or the lead female role in a movie, for example – tells us that the original and authentic look of black women is practically extinct and sends us the silent message that since we don’t make the beauty spaces, we can’t possibly be beautiful.

The last time we celebrated our woolly tresses en masse was in the 1970s. Whilst it is wonderful to see us returning to the resplendence of our natural woolly hair, it is also saddening to see that there are still so many of us who struggle with this basic liberty – to freely display our natural woolly hair without the fear of what others may think, or the feeling of not being beautiful. It is this feeling of not being perceived as beautiful that has slowly eroded the confidence of many of our sisters to fully embrace this incredible aspect of their beauty, causing them to hide it under hairpieces that look vastly different from the woolly hair, or seek to change it with chemicals. This further increases the risk of our look becoming extinct, and feeds what can only be described as beauty anxiety – the fear that in our natural state we are simply not beautiful. Whilst many of us would label our attempts to mask our beauty anxiety as choice, by going from one hairpiece to another, arguably beauty anxiety is more a form of bondage than a choice as, ironically, it often leaves us with no choice but to hide, mask or cover our natural beauty.

Essentially, this is a holistic health issue, touching our spiritual, emotional, mental, physical, and financial health. Many of our woolly-haired sisters simply do not believe that they are beautiful when wearing their natural hair. The mental and emotional pressure from this encourages them to look for freedom-compromising hair alternatives, often using hairpieces provided by an entirely different race – a spiritual issue. In some cases, many will not swim or workout regularly because they are concerned that these hair alternatives will get wet and become ruined or sweated out. This directly impacts our sisters’ physical, mental, and emotional health. This is the kind of restrictive lifestyle that these hair alternatives can cause, alternatives that can also be a huge financial strain because they can be very expensive to both purchase and maintain.

In this book we aim to break the chains of bondage, firstly by highlighting the fact that this woolly hair issue is based on a lie, and secondly by thinking through the consequences of believing this lie. We will ultimately explain how we move forward from it.

Here goes…

1. Lies vs. Truth

When we both began wearing TWAs (Teeny Weeny Afros), over ten years ago now, our fellow sisters, whilst very complimentary, would often ask us, Just how are you able to do that with confidence? At the time, there were not many other sisters within a fifty-mile radius of us who were doing the same thing, so we attracted quite a bit of attention within our community, to say the least. But to us, the fact that our natural hair came out of our head like wool told us that this was obviously the way our hair was meant to be, and we backed this with biblical truth. We simply remembered Genesis 1:31, where the Creator said it (His creation) is very good.

Given the history of woolly hair in the Western world during the last few centuries, we understood people’s questions and their fascinated stares. We, too, at one time believed that freely displaying our natural woolly hair, particularly in a short and easy wash-n-go style, was an impossibility. And a few times, at the advice of family members, we adopted what many consider to be the better hair alternatives.

It was only by thinking the issue through that we realized that this hair issue, like many issues in life, comes down to the choice between believing a lie and believing the truth. Lies and truth are, as one would expect, quite different. The lie can, and often will, break our spirit; the truth can, and often will, build it up. The truth can be hard to believe, but the lie can be quite easy to believe because it often appears to look like the truth, particularly when people choose to live out of it. The term often used to describe this is lies disguised as truth. We do not give lies much thought, we simply believe them. But the truth is something we often find harder to believe until we have given it considerable thought