“My hair is in tiny cornrows; I have a big ponytail on the top of my head. I quite like it. It is natural. I am a bit of a fundamentalist when it comes to black women’s hair. Hair is hair – yet also about larger questions: self-acceptance, insecurity and what the world tells you is beautiful. For many black women, the idea of wearing their hair naturally is unbearable.” Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

This is the quote that has me riled up today. Ok not the quote itself because I agree with her. Hair is a statement on our concept of beauty. Our concept of beauty is tied to our concept of the self.

There are entire twitter threads on the interpretation of this. Women who don’t wear their hair natural have low self esteem. This is the interpretation. I do not read that in this quote. It does not matter what I interpret this quote to mean. She is an intelligent woman and she makes sense.

What is natural? Does natural mean unprocessed? Does it mean hard and kinky? Does it mean short? What exactly is natural? If you are Somali, Ethiopian or my grandmother your definition of natural does include the words silky and soft. As Chris Rock once asked, “What is good hair?”

My idea of natural is unprocessed (heat or chemical) and uncoloured. Wear it how it grows, then harp on about natural! Natural aside,I want to speak to my own opinions on this very popular concept of “african beauty”. But first this Hair thing.

I have good hair (yeah I said it!).I have only ever experienced hair envy once. A certain Mbua. She is my hair ideal. She wears her hair in this afro mane and I hate her for it! I just want to grab a pair of scissors and Marie-Antoinette-before-the-beheading her! (sigh- I am so glad I got it out!). My hair idol is Esperanza Spalding. IT IS NATURAL AND IT IS GOOD! The point is I do not think the two necessarily go hand in hand.

Short hair in Kenya is rarely about afro-consciousness and I would appreciate it if we did not pretend it was. I would also appreciate it if women who wear their hair short did not appropriate “Natural beauty”. Why do women wear their hair short? Sometimes it is about afro-consciousness but rarely. Sometimes it is an economic decision. Can we be real for a minute and confess that long hair is a money pit. Natural and cropped short is simply easier to manage and maintain. It is about beauty. Women who wear their hair short look younger. Something happens to older women when they wear their hair short, they regain that youthful glow. It is nature’s own facelift. For younger women it is sometimes the only way to deal with damaged hair. Over processing your hair weakens it and at times the last resort is to shave it all off and start afresh. It is only once it is off that the wonderful world of short hair hits them and they just do not go back.

I do not pontificate on the ills of weaves. My hair is thick and full. My key vanity is that it looks and behaves like a weave. I do not understand the realities of women who have receding hairlines or are balding or have thin hair or have flat hair. I just don’t. I also do not understand women whose hair grows slowly. When I need to chop off my hair I worry about looking like a boy (my hair softens my face- I believe) not whether it will grow back or how fast it will grow back.

I need Kenyan women (I speak to that which I know) to stop shopping for affirmation. I also need us to not affirm ourselves by putting others down. We must to this end confess certain truths.

We value long hair. Our definition of good hair takes length into great account. Fact.

We did not define this beauty but we have adopted it. I suspect we have also lost the battle to redefine this beauty. I did not inherit my father’s/ grandmother’s silky hair. I process my hair twice a year so that for 9 out of 12 months I can fake an afro. My afro months have led me to discover that we cannot reclaim the beauty standard and this is because of how we go about it. When I am in my afro people always think I am making a statement about my “africaness”. Why is the afro a statement of black consciousness rather than one of beauty? Why are there no dumb blondes who sport afros? If I wear an afro it is assumed that I am smart. When my hair is straight I have to work to look intelligent. If we truly believed that natural is beautiful we would not need to holler so loudly about it, would we?

Women in well done weaves/ processed hair look good. Fact. My particular aversion to weaves is that it is too much money to spend on hair but when it comes to looks, they look good. I would not engage every woman in a weave in a lecture on self esteem. I would have every woman sport the hair that she feels highlights her glory. I would also have women sport hair that they can afford (I will not have campus students spending 70,000 KES on hair, it is ludicrous and dodgy- I want to know how you got the money!). It is the same as the makeup to wear or not debate? (Even Naomi Woolf could not give us an answer on the way forward for this in her book the beauty myth)

Do I believe that our perception of beauty as a virtue is not an African construct? Yes. But then again what is the African construct? Hair is not just hair. Hair is bigger than hair but I will not have us putting down women who don’t do natural just so we feel better. We will not affirm ourselves at their expense.

Also I believe we must be very wary of buying into the western construct of African beauty! It is a western construct that the true African beauty has very dark skin, short coarse hair and certain features. Liya Kebede is as much an African beauty as Ajuma and Alek Wek. Do not let anyone tell you otherwise. There is also no such thing as an African standard of beauty. Africans are diverse. Beautiful in Nigeria is not beautiful in Kenya nor is it beautiful in Morocco or indeed SA. Someone is trying to tell us what constitutes real African beauty and because it fits who we are we are buying into it. Should Kenyan born Somali girls then not wear their hair long and silky to fit into the “natural beauty” description?

I once had a white girl (from one of those former USSR countries that are poorer than some African countries) tell me I was more beautiful than the other Africans in the room because I was lighter. She went on to clarify that what she meant was that, black is beautiful when it is a certain shade of black. Then caught in the moment (that moment when white people say something and feel the need to defend it because it never occurred to them how wrong it sounded till they said it out loud) she said I did not look too African. (I like uncomfortable conversations). For the record should someone tell you this, do not rile at them. Sometimes a person who is not racist speaks a mindset that we will never learn if we insist on politically correct speech. I have met blond and blue eyed Jews (not politically correct but I do mean people whose relatives were hunted down by Hitler’s regime for being Jewish) and I pointed it out to them. My visual of the Jew was thick dark hair and heavy eyebrows. Have you ever seen a blond blue-eyed prisoner in all those holocaust movies? We must have politically incorrect conversations.

The idea that I did not look too African was interesting for me in the sense that I have never thought my “Africaness” could be debated. Black opal Hazelnut is my skin shade so I am undisputably African. I am not light skinned. Nowhere near it. I am brown not high yellow or yellow boned but definitely brown. Had I been yellow boned the statement could have been justifiable. It opened my mind to the idea that there is a cliché out there of what constitutes African beauty and we are playing right into it.