I have to say, I once coveted Rachel Dolezal's natural hair, mainly a curl pattern like the one she has. Those ringlets had the shape I craved and the movement I would never have. I, along with the almost everyone else, was duped into thinking those were the curls of someone with afro-textured hair. I have to say I felt a shameful, smug victory when the news broke that Rachel Dolezal is a white woman claiming to be black. I nodded my head in understanding when the reports started to come out that Dolezal wasn't a fellow natural hair gal; she was merely a natural hair imposter. I don't know why, but this made sense to me and I accepted it immediately and moved on.
Afro-textured hair comes in a variety of curl types and it's pretty easy to be jealous of a curl type more manageable or more versatile than your own. Black women struggle to have manageable hair. This is not a secret. We relax, we heat-style, we do what we have to do in an effort to avoid additional discrimination. To me, having afro-textured hair is like having a partner who treats you like crap. You give them everything, you buy them expensive gifts, you are constantly at their beck and call — and they give you nothing but sorrow in return. Now, I'm not offended that anyone else would want afro-textured hair (I know I look good), but it just seems like a whole lot of work. If you were posing as a Black American, you would need to do several things to keep your story straight.
Rule #1: Have Bad Hair Days
No, child, your hair does not look good every day. The era of wearing your hair out every day is OVER. In order to keep up your kinky façade, you've got to take a day off — or people will start to get suspicious. Funky head wraps are your new best friend, so you get bonus points for embracing the Baduizm.
Rule # 2: Your Hair Can Never Be The Same Length From Day To Day
As sources at Jezebel pointed out, Dolezal did some extensive research. I can only hope she read some of my own natural hair articles for tips. and I hope I even gave her a few tips of my own. Natural hair is constantly different lengths due to its love/hate relationship with water. If your hair is long but dryer than Africa, putting some water on it means you lose several inches of precious curls.
Rule # 3: Get Up On Your Black Hair Terms
Shrinkage, coils, hot combs, rat-tail combs — these terms need to be rolling off your tongue. Get to the library and hope they have some old Jet magazines because you'll need to time-travel back to OLD black hair terms so that people know you've had afro-textured hair your whole life.
Rule # 4: You Must Fear The Rain
Now, here's the thing: Rain is great, but you certainly can't get caught out there if you don't actually have afro-textured hair. You hair tends to shrink up pretty much immediately at the first sign of a sprinkle. Depending on the curl type your posing as, you are going to be a nappy mess. If it isn't, well... the jig is up.
Rule # 5: Don't Forget To Wrap Your Hair
Dolezal was wearing du-rags to protect her "natural hair" way before the fashion industry tried to make them an all-inclusive fashion statement. If you are not sleeping on satin pillow cases or in a satin wrap then your hair should be breaking. Whenever you have a night guest or friends staying over, make sure you complain about having to wrap your hair at night.
Regardless of Dolezal's ethnicity or hair type, I am personally impressed by her hair maintenance and everything she's done to raise awareness about afro-textured hair. While so many women of color are relaxing or heat-styling our hair to be straight, there is someone out there that went beyond the call of duty to have our kinky hair.
Image: 11 Alive/YouTube; Kristin Collins Jackson; Giphy
