Carla Manuel
Straight or kinky? This is why I rarely wear out my natural hair!
Updated: Jul 9, 2018

I talked about my hair journey in a previous post you can see it here:
https://www.elizebonheur.com/blog/me-myself-and-my-hair-obsession
But what I didn't include in the above post was my actual situation hair wise. I rarely use my natural hair out and the reason is very simple, my hair grows faster when I don't touch it! I've been natural for 9 years now, I've cut it all off twice, and I've had phases were I would wear my natural hair out for months but it would not grow past a certain length. This situation started to frustrate me so I started doing a lot of protective styles, weaves and braids without giving any rest to my hair. This only made the situation worse, I started losing hair on my edges then the ends started to get very thin and the whole hair started to break.

When I became natural I thought that I wouldn't have any more stress with my hair because I was only putting natural products in it, I thought that I wouldn't have to put much work into it because I wasn't wearing any chemicals. I was very naive!
Natural hair is very high maintenance, if you want it to grow healthy you need to put a lot of time and patience into it. So this time around after my most recent big chop (cutting all of my hair off) I decided to leave it alone, I don't wear anything that pulls at it anymore, I decided to start wearing wigs.
Now I know that even though a lot of women wear wigs now there is still a lot of prejudice about it, mainly because supposedly black women that wear straight hair wigs are denying their roots, or don't love themselves, or are brainwashed. Now I can't speak for every woman that wears a wig but I will tell you the reasons why I wear them:
1. Because they are so easy to use
2. You can take them off whenever you want
3. It allows you to change the way you look in minutes
Wigs are convenient, and for someone that loves to change hairstyles as much as I do they are one of the best inventions ever!

Someone once told me that they views wigs as accessories, it's just like wearing an hat or a bracelet, it changes your look and makes you look good but it doesn't define you. As I mentioned on my previous article about hair, your hairstyle can complement or completely destroy a look so what better way to quickly change looks than to have these accessories available to us?
My natural hair is growing a lot since I started wearing wigs and I am sure that it is because I don't put so much pressure on it anymore, I just let it be. Wearing a wig has made taking care of my natural hair a lot easier.Will I ever wear my natural hair exclusively? I don't think so, I think I will always be the woman that changes hairstyles all the time, because I am actually very happy like this.