Tag: beauty

Why Perms Are Afraid of Water

55bbba8913bb130476c921638a3be69aThis is part two in a three part series.

Read Part Three Here: Why Natural Hair is Dehydrated

Read Part One Here: Hair and the Nervous System

If you don’t know about the health deficiencies of the relaxer by now, then you just don’t know. Perms and relaxers have been a long time favorite of many women, but this beauty regimen comes at a high price – hair breakage, scalp irritation, stunted hair growth, and even permanent hair loss.*

The government name for the perm is Sodium Hydroxide, a dangerous chemical that eats away at any part of the body that it contacts, including hair. It is a powerful chemical known as lye and caustic soda and is found in many industrial solvents and cleaners, including flooring stripping products, brick cleaners, types of cement, and many others. It can also be found in certain household products, including:

• Drain cleaners
• Metal polishes
• Oven cleaners

The interesting thing about the drain cleaner is that the Sodium Hydroxide helps clear away the hair often found corked at the bottom of bathtubs and sinks. What does this have to do with the hair on our heads? While it’ll take quite some time to explain all of the information concerning the harmful effects of the perm, let us focus on the topic at hand, why are perms so afraid of water?

We’ve all been there. You just got your hair lyed, dyed, and laid to the side! What the beautician just did to your hair is nothing short of amazing. But you can’t get it wet. You can’t go swimming, and heaven help you when it rains!

Our hair is made up of layers. The outer layer protects the hair shaft. When the layer of protection is damaged with the use of chemical relaxers, this causes the ends of your hair to split. This damage can travel up the hair shaft and cause hair breakage, resulting in damaged uneven hair. Some say to trim the ends, but the truth is that perms and relaxers are quite jealous of the hair’s natural state so it promotes split ends. They dry the ends of your hair and wear down the protective layer.

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Relaxers in African American hair work by allowing the chemicals to break the protein bonds in the hair to change its shape and make course hair straight. But by breaking the bonds that give hair its strength, it is left weak and vulnerable (poor hair). So when water hits the already weakened hair bonds, they become like useless limp strings. It also weakens the hair follicle, making relaxed hair more susceptible to breakage.307988-61011-30The hair has a particular wave pattern that is held by two sets of physical side bonds and a set of chemical side bonds. The physical side bonds are not as strong but are more numerous, while the chemical side bonds are much stronger, but there are fewer. Because of this, someone with permed hair is recommended to wait a few days before shampooing or wetting the hair to allow the hair time to “normalize” and fully adjust to the new wave patterns.

Perms change the shape and texture of the hair through the use of strong chemicals. Your perm is afraid of water because it is as if it just had surgery and needs time to heal and adjust to the new pattern.

Her Song

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Her fingers girdle themselves
around the microphone
like blessings wrapped in silk
prepared to sing poetic melodies
in front an audience too deaf to hear the angels
playing on the strings of her vocal cords
to witness the flapping of wings against their skin
too blind to see the messages dancing on her collar bone
but she sings still
and smells too much like happiness to be broken

Summer Smells

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I love the smell of summer. Though you really can’t experience it until the sun starts to set and darkness sets in. Right now the sun is overtaking any whiff of delicacy in the air with its blazing heat, so you’d have to wait a while to experience what I mean. It has to be the perfect mixture of cool and warm mixed in a giant bowl called your backyard. I would describe it like freshly cut grass or the new growth of leaves on tree branches. Or maybe we can associate it with the smell of a coming rain. These aren’t very good descriptions. I know I have not enticed your creative mind to the extent of sight. I know you have not tasted the air of freshness melting on your tongue and all, but I have no other way to describe it aside from these basic examples. Besides, how does one explain the fragrance of life? Sometimes you can see a flower pouring all of its insides out, and cracking shells; shedding the once imperfect exterior to one more fitting for the season. Its growth is in many ways like our own. On first sight it looks like total destruction, and there is no gold at the end of the rainbow, at least not until we have weathered the storm. Always the hard stuff first, pain, suffering, tears, loneliness, doubt. I imagine it is a difficult process too for the flower. So much work to be done and change to endure early on. Only when it has shed its old casing do we begin to see the pretty pinks and reds of softer petals peek out from under the new coat of skin, see the dazzling beauty of what it has now become, and taste of the fresh smells of life.

Welcome

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I picked up your scent going out the door this morning. I should have known that the impulse of a summer dress, short sleeved and cool, and the sliding of my foot into sneakers meant you were not far away. Instead, I would let my sweater drape over my arm and sniff the moisture you left hanging in the air. It wasn’t very bright out, but budding flowers and children laughing was enough. Did not need to see the sun lean its body dramatically over the clouds to feel the heat of spring on my skin. Bright colored birds sang a joyful tune on into the sky, and the curtains moved against the window sill just as seductively as the tree branches swayed leaves to and fro. And as my husband presents me with a pot of African violet, with petals all soft and blooming, and my neighbors resurrect house chairs for a spot on the porch, I know that spring has arrived. Welcome.

Black Beauty

**A little History on this Poem**

This is a 12 year old poem. It has since been revised but this is the original copy that I wrote back when I was a sophomore in High School. It was entered into a contest and it won. I was then to fly to Rio Nevada for the award ceremony but I could not afford to go. I have since performed it many times throughout my High School career at assemblies and talent shows. For me it was my first poem. It was the first poem I wrote that really spoke about something deeper than my personal adolescent issues and reached beyond the childhood perspective I was used to writing about. It was also my first Spoken Word poem, the first poem I ever shared while standing before an Audience. Today I would like to share it with you. (Keep in mind I was only like 15 when I wrote this so bear with me lol):

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BEAUTY
Wake up Black beauty!
Look up black beauty!
And see the mountain range
Stand up Black beauty, know your name
Be the Sun that shines,
I clothe in your sweetness, I see in your eyes
I notice your strength and weaknesses that lies
Time has gone and we have grown,
into these skies of disguise
we are Earth’s insects, its flies.
Walking this ground with our black feet,
sitting at tables eating our black meat,
it is beauty we see.
Working our black railroads
While listening to stories retold
Watching as oceans and seas travel for miles and miles without smirks or smiles,
licking greedy lips,
waiting for boats and ships to please its hips
we are the ground walked upon
We sing and cook with soul offering any hungry person a bowl
We realize the importance of education
that we had before civilization
that we had before coming into the truth of our very own nation.
A nation of many different colors and sizes,
all of various secrets and surprises
We are the proud combination of dark skins,
from small twos to plus sized tens,
we are ALL beautiful.

The Beautiful Sky

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Have you ever walked outside at dusk and noticed all the colors in the sky? The way the moon just bleeds crimson bright; splashes of daylight prophesying hints of yellow like screaming oracles, and burnt orange autumns that cements itself inside the belly of the sky. The way that birds defy the darkness to find refuge in the path of light, soaring on the backs of indigo clouds or beige highlights swinging low like sweet chariots. Even the wind rejoices in the shadows of the moonlight bouncing off the concrete. As for me, I can’t take my eyes off the sky. I wish only to pull up a chair, dip my hands into a bowl of moon; sip it slow like a glass of Sauvignon on Saturday night when my resting has come to an end; let it fill my empty; turn my distress into dancing.