The Hair Chronicles, Volume II: Mia

Biracial hair can be tricky.  My daughter has beautiful spiral curls that reach to the middle of her back, but she also has many of the worst traits of both black girl hair and white girl hair.  Her hair is prone to matting, she is very tender headed, she gets "peas" in her kitchen (that means little knots of hair at the nape of her neck for you white folks) and she has baby fine, fly away hair, all at once. 

Her hair is also shiny, healthy, clean and done, no matter how many tears on both sides it takes.  Never have I been more tempted to drink a double martini at 11 a.m. than I am after doing Mia's hair.  I still wait for social services to show up after every session of combing we have because of the screaming (hers, not mine, I just grind my teeth and plead a lot).

I've had many people ask me, "Why don't you just let her hair be curly and natural?"  That would be fine, she has beautiful ringlets, but would you like to come over every day and comb the mats and tangles and the start of some good dreadlocks out while is she screaming and squirming like you are trying to poke her with a sharp stick in the eye?  I didn't think so.  For all the women who have little blonde headed girls who say, "Oh, I just use lots of conditioner on the snarls!" I say, "Honey, we're talking apples and oranges here, this ain't something a little Johnson's No More Tears conditioner is gonna take care of."

This is what Mia's hair looks like after I take her current braid arrangement out before her bath.  (Click on picture to enlarge.)

Oh and that thing she's holding over her nose is Blankey, not to be confused with Michael Jackson's son Blanket.  This is Mia's own very special (fragrant) Blankey.  Back to the hair. This is also what her hair looks like if it's not braided.  She could be a really short non-militant Angela Davis, couldn't she?

It's taken me a lot of practice, a lot of patience, a lot of tears and trial and error, but finally, FINALLY, after four years, I can do my daughter's hair and it looks as pretty as she is.

My tricks:  I use a conditioning shampoo, the best I can afford, and I save the conditioner tube thingies from when I color my hair and after shampooing, put a good tablespoon/palm full on her hair and don't rinse it out.  I blot her hair with a towel but leave it still mostly wet and put TCB hair grease (Note: I have naturally curly hair that can get frizzy dry ends and I use a little tiny dab of TCB on the ends every week or so and it works wonders) all through it without combing it. This is where the screaming begins:  I comb small sections, starting at the back of her neck in the kitchen and when I'm done, I clip it out of the way and go on to the next section.  I part it, according to how many braids we have decided on (two, four or eight) and I twist each section as tight as I can before I put a rubber band on close to her scalp.  Not just any rubber band, either.  They must be silicone or they break when you put them on.  I braid the ponytail as tight as I possibly can to the very bottom and twist the ends around a small colorful barrette.  After I've braided it all, I smooth a non-frizz creme over the non-braided parts. 

I should also note, I only shampoo Mia's hair about once every two weeks.  Why?  Because it doesn't need it.  I rinse it every time she bathes and if it's washed every time, it gets limp, fragile and breaks easily.  I rinse it and smooth conditioner over it. 

To freshen it up every day, I re-braid her pigtails if they need it and use more anti-frizz creme to smooth all of it.  She also wears a sleeping hat, which looks like a fabric shower cap, but it keeps her hair from getting smashed around. 

This is the end result.  Not bad for a white girl with bad hair herself, if I do say so.

Comments

[ronni]

Lisa, she is so beautiful! She is very lucky that you have curls that you have had to learn to manage. If she were my child, she would probably have very very short hair, much like yours was a year and a half ago...

[Nadine]

Lisa, you are a paragon of patience. I think I'd probably have a Martini before even starting the hair session.

[shannon harding]

Very beautiful hair!=)

[Nadine]

Did I mention she's cute as a button before and after?

Much more stylish after, thanks to you, Lisa!

[Martin]

You'll all note the apprehensive, behind the blankey, look before the hair session and the smile after the trauma is finished!

[Stacy]

What I noticed, besides the adorableness of her, is the Ann Rule book in the background. Heh.

[moi]

Kudos to Lisa and Martin.
I have been on your end of the comb/brush Lisa. Martin it is hard on the bystanders to witness the torture. When I was about 12 or 13 years old, I cut off my baby sisters foot and a haff long ponytail braid at the elastic with a single-edged razor blade. I was very careful and she was a willing victim (5 years younger). My unwitting parents had left her in my care while they were off fishing...heh. It was a shock and awe experience when they returned and found the remnants of what was left on her head. I had carefully preserved the very thick/long braid. My nerves had simply had enough of hearing her squalk and suffer during the combing/brushing of the tangles after washing it or swimming. I had had the same braid torture and somewhere my braids still exist carefully wrapped for the next voo-doo person. Why do we save those things? The sad part of the story is that the poor sister had to have a buzz cut as the hair closest to the elastic (which was high on the back of her head) was perhaps 1/4 of an inch long and the rest kind of radiated out geometrically into a reverse mohawkish result. I had no regrets and neither did the baby sister. It was my mother who freaked. Quelle surpris! Again, Kudos to you both. I am with Ronni on the pixy-ish buzz. I went through 3 daughters getting ready for school with daily hair challenges; some imagined, some real and some self-induced experiments with sun-in hair lightener the day before the first day of school. She looked like the orange fingers of dawn.
xxoomoi

[Lisa]

I wondered if anyone would notice the Ann in the background. I only realized it was there after I posted the picture.