'Relaxed hair is not healthy'

Hiya,
So I'm back with a second post in 1 night!!Yay!! 

I was browsing through bellanaija the other day and came across this ARTICLE , the author's focus was on educating people on the issue of hair care, relaxing properly etc. Good educative material, then I scrolled to the comments and I almost threw up on myself!! The Natural Nazis ( as someone aptly termed them) were in town. Now I will pause first to acknowledge and thank EVERY NATURAL haired lady that follows this blog or has ever come to this blog and read and received with an open mind what I have had to say because apparently my hair is simply UNhealthy for being relaxed!

You see human beings are really funny, it is in our make up to factionalize ourselves in groups and start to form complexes! I'm superior, you are inferior! Case in point  this year's Bigbrother Africa has two houses, the downvillers- common people like me and the Upvillers- 'Celebrities', as weeks unfolded, downvillers were brought to Upville and it was so funny to hear Upvillers during their diary sessions talk to Big brother about downvillers like they were a different specie altogether- ' you see biggie, these downvillers don't kow how to act- blah blah!' I just kept saying to myself, because they have called you Upvillers now, you automatically think you are better than downvillers, same thing that caused racism, religious factions, tribalism now NATURALHAIRSIM!!

Yes oh, it exists life and direct! Just read some of the comments I culled from the article below; 

'It’s not possible to have healthy relaxed hair. Relaxed hair by its very nature is damaged by the process of relaxing so sorry. Better luck next time. Try again.'

'It does not matter whether your relaxed hair looks as thick as any of Beyonce’s lacefronts. Once you have applied that chemical to your hair, your hair is no longer healthy.'

READ MORE VENOM;

'Sometimes I wonder if relaxer has smoked people’s brains out. Sugabelly is 1000% right! Yes, natural hair can be unhealthy if uncared for but relaxed hair is BY DEFAULT, UNHEALTHY!!! While natural hair is BY DEFAULT, HEALTHY. You CANNOT have healthy and relaxed hair, it is indeed an oxymoron; that option doesn’t even exist whereas you can certainly attain healthy natural hair.

'When you PERMANENTLY ALTER YOUR PHYSICAL TEXTURE, YOUR HAIR BECOMES UNHEALTHY. Read a F****** book'

'Looking after relaxed hair is medicine after death
We are all just in denial because obviously, we are afraid of change and the self-hate is something we do not want to admit.'

'Just say, you are too lazy to care for your hair and you like the look of relaxed hair and the illusion of long hair with wigs/weaves.'

WOW, exhausted just looking at these comments, trust me there are more comments but I just picked a few that stood out! Now it's funny that natural hair ladies turned this article topic to ' Relaxed hair= unhealthy hair, PERIOD! Was that the topic? No! Even if that was the topic and they wanted to seize the opportunity to educate relaxed ladies on going natural, what kind of condescending, holier than thou tones were these comments written in! 

How 'healthy' are some of the choices we make on a daily basis? Its like me saying why on earth will you put a hole in your ear and weigh it down with something you call an 'ear ring' do you know the consequences?! Your earlobes will be drooping when you are 80 years old! Well, inspite of that possibility, we all still wear earrings!! Or like some commenters fired back; 

'you might like ur hair healthy and natural but the faux leather shoes, bags and cosmetics u carry and use are tested on some poor animals and are not so natural.'

'Even the food you eat, as long as you eat some form of processed food, that is chemical exposure too. Your mobile phone, that you put close to your ears for hours daily, is also chemical exposure. So avoiding relaxed hair because of the chemicals damaging it, is a moot point.'

'is it the use of the word HEALTHY, that is causing all this...I’ve seen some obese ladies with natural hair, I’ll prefer it if they put in as much effort in their health than in their hair. #teamgoodbeautifulhair (relaxed, dreadlocks, kinky &all)'
You see to me, relaxing your hair or not  is NOT a do or die affair that warranted some of these comments, I strongly leaned to some degree on what this commenter said; 

'Any hair that grows out of your scalp and is visible to the human eye is dead fiber… Anything “dead” cannot be healthy; be it chemically treated or not… So to all of you that discuss hair and use the word “healthy” there’s no such thing as “healthy” hair… There is “well managed” hair or hair that is “well cared for”.. When you realize that maybe you’d learn to appreciate people’s choices when it comes to chemically treat their hair or not…'

Basically hair, nails are all dead red and white blood cells that keep accumulating. If you care for them well you will accumulate them for longer, if you don't they fray off and you loose them. That's why its 'HEALTH' is determined first from how well your body health internally is, then how well its maintained externally!Simple!

Yes I am the first to tell you that if you use a relaxer to break down your hair shaft to get straighter hair, you have exposed your hair adversely to some degree and it is more likely to be weak, the same weakness can result if you are natural and you color treat your hair with hair dyes. Its just like if you are white and tan in the sun without sun protection you expose yourself to skin cancer, but if you tan with sun protection, you will be protected and can tan as long as you like! Likewise if after you relax your hair( and  there's no proof that relaxers cause cancer) you protect it daily and have good hair practices, your hair will not suffer as adversely as it would without that care.

I always liken being relaxed to getting an epidural during child birth! Wow before I had my baby I got an earful from EVERYBODY telling me not to get an epidural, stories upon stories of paralysis and numbness scared the crap out of me but then the time came and I did not hesitate the offer of an epidural! Now are you telling me that I am less of a mother to my son than the lady who struggled through the pain and refused an epidural and had her baby?! Really?? Is it not the 2eyes, 1 nose, 2 ears her son has that mine has? Because I choose an option that in my opinion is less stressful and easier for me to pull off I have to be labelled as LAZY or having SELF- HATE! What a flawed warped mentality!!  Ladies saying this should also start writing letters and posting them instead of using their phones or computers or stop driving their cars and use their foot everywhere they go so as to stop polluting our beloved earth!

The Relaxer has solved a problem for people who want more manageable hair, well for me that's the only reason I relax my hair! If done properly and not too regularly (just like with ice cream, cakes, alcohol- too much of everything is bad) your hair whether anybody likes to believe it or not will grow and be healthy!!! 
If you think because you have gone natural it will equal healthy hair, you have been greatly deceived my dear, if you can look at my hair and call it unhealthy then I want to have UNhealthy hair all day, anytime!! LOL

I'd like to hear your views on this issue! Is my hair simply unhealthy because I relaxed it? What is healthy and unhealthy hair to you?

Ps.  My grand mother who has natural hair, never relaxed it has receding hairline, brittle hair that breaks so easily, she spent a few months with me, stopped using blue magic and sulphur 8, started conditioning her hair and after seeing improvements asked me why I hadn't educated her about hair all this while! So it's not about being relaxed or not at the end of the day, how well do you treat these accumulated DEAD cells on your scalp!! 



Xxx
Dabs