Saturday, November 28, 2009

Little Black girl wants long straight hair...

The picture you see is a self-portrait I drew when I was 9 years old. It came from an autobiography I did in the 3rd grade. Crazy that with all of the moving I've done, I still have stuff like this. Ha!

Anyway...look at how I saw myself. Or saw what I wanted to be. The image I drew is not me. I never had hair down to my feet. And my hair (even with a perm because I had when at 9 years old) was never that straight. So then why did I draw that?

Maybe it's because all of my Barbie dolls had long and straight hair. It's sad. I hope that my future daughters love what they see in the mirror. That they don't grasp on to some ideology that straight and long hair is what will make them "more" beautiful.

Do you see the issues that Black women have with hair? We aren't making this up. And it starts when we are little girls....

4 comments:

kukaberry said...

Oh man, I always drew myself like this! Sometimes I would draw curly or wavy hair but it was always long down to my butt! My hair has never been that long and most of my classmates didn't have that kind of hair. I wonder where I picked that up?

Anonymous said...

External things should not define you. You are a child of the universe, no less than the stars.

Do not succumb to the tyranny of convention.

Anonymous said...

Yes. But, it's a new day now. Besides, if you let your locs grow, they WILL be this long.. ha ha.. that's my intention, at least. :)

Anonymous said...

Hey,

I came across this on your blog and it reminded me of...well me! I had plenty of pictures of myself like this - except my hair was more reddish, a la Ariel (The Little Mermaid).

Although, I must say that I'm much happier now, with my short little locs, than I ever was as a little kid pretending that my t-shirts were my long flowing hair. :)

Thanks for posting this!