#TalkTo | A woman who cut it all off (well most of it)
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I ignored that little girl and her mother. But I do want to talk about why did I cut my hair like a little boy? And so I should have set this up as a question and answer, and I'm not really sure how to do that now that I'm already recording it, but I'm going to record this story in a few different snippets and give people a chance to reply to each each snippet. So question or comments for each snippet
Ann-Gela Kaye
@DearAuntyAng · 1:57
And so if you weren't actually using the bathroom facilities, you had to do other stuff in another room. And I also did not have my own bedroom at the time. So there I am at the kitchen table, combing my hair. And as I'm combing my hair, hair is literally raining down on me. It's on the table, it's on my shoulders. When I stood up, there was all this hair on the floor. It literally rained down. It was shedding
J.L. Beasley
@Her_Sisu · 2:42
You. Hi. First and foremost, thank you for your vulnerability in sharing your hair journey with the world and your experience definitely is freeing for many who are listening and and I appreciate that as a woman who has female pattern baldness, also known as androgenetic Alopecia, that started at age 28 and I am now 42. Just to give anyone listening as well as yourself an idea of how long I've been with the condition, I get it
Ann-Gela Kaye
@DearAuntyAng · 2:04
But it's what I needed to do to have my hair. Because having your hair fall out as a woman is not a good thing at all. Not only do you not feel beautiful, but people will literally laugh at you, talk about you. They will even say things like, you're cursed. Because a woman's hair, from what I was taught, it represents God's glory
J.L. Beasley
@Her_Sisu · 4:56
It was a real devastating moment right then and there. Realized that I was losing my hair, because what I understood was that on my father's side of the family, the females had significant hair loss. Never was told what the term of it was or why. I mean, to the point, like, bald and wearing wigs from that point forward
Swell Team
@Swell · 0:15
J.L. Beasley
@Her_Sisu · 4:41
So I literally just kind of internalized it and grieved the hair loss and was too embarrassed to go to a barbershop. So I searched for a salon, a natural salon that someone could cut hair. And I really should have went to a barbershop. My son's father cut his own hair. So I took off work, went to the salon. The lady cut my hair, butchered it
Ann-Gela Kaye
@DearAuntyAng · 4:50
And I was combing it and it was shedding. This felt so freeing and so liberating. This hair was like this prison I was in. And the haircut was finally me being set free, the locks being open, the bars being open, and I was able to be free. I had no idea how much weight my hair had. And for someone who didn't have long hair and who was teased and called bald headed, who knew that that hair had so much weight?
J.L. Beasley
@Her_Sisu · 4:53
And I was saying to the woman, I said, Sometimes I really, truly miss my hair. I love my shaved head. I'm thankful that I have a nice, round head. I'm thankful that my facial features complement my hair, but sometimes I truly miss my hair. And she looked at me, she said, well, you can grow it. I was like, you know, there's eight different forms of alopecia. Not all of them are reversible
Tanya Coles
@MsColes77 · 4:58
Hey, SIS. Thank you so much. When you started talking about the natural hair community, I ain't gonna lie, girl, I got not triggered, but I was like, OOH, this would make a whole swell cast all by itself right here. Because I started going natural right when natural hair was really starting to boom. And more and more women were big chopping, and more and more women were transitioning from relaxers to natural hair. And it was really starting to grow
Ann-Gela Kaye
@DearAuntyAng · 4:59
My sister always had beautiful long hair until she started doing chemo. Even then, when it began to grow back, it was beautiful. So pretty much the women don't have an issue other than me. There I go. And so my hair has grown a lot. Now, the hair you see in my picture, is that's a weave? I wear a crochet weave, but my hair is actually very long
Tanya Coles
@MsColes77 · 4:49
And it was so disheartening and I was just so heartbroken over it because, as you said, a woman's hair is her glory. And hair issues hit us differently than even our non black counterparts. And so I got off the medication. My hair is better, but then wearing all these faux locks all summer long has also dried my hair out. So I'm attempting I have two strand twists in my hair right now, and I'm going to attempt to start a lock journey
Ann-Gela Kaye
@DearAuntyAng · 4:59
But isn't it better to have short healthy or short beautiful hair as opposed to trying to hold on to strands that don't want to hold on to you? If I look in the mirror every day and want to curse because I hate my hair, that's not glorious. But if it's short and I'm happy with it, then that to me speaks more of the glory of God, right?
Moe Johnson
@NeophyteSavant · 5:00
And short hair, especially black women, have been dealing with that for a long time. But a black man, or any man for that matter, could have long hair, but they won't associate them with being a girl. As soon as a black woman has short hair, she's associated with being a boy. And the thing is that we tend to pick and choose who we apply these stereotypes to
Ann-Gela Kaye
@DearAuntyAng · 4:47
And if you're losing your hair, like I said, it's like people don't care or they'll say that you've been cursed, and it's like, well, can you just bring me to the doctor? Can you understand why it's crazy? So, yeah, it's a hot commodity or a hot topic, for sure. Men have a lot to do with it, but like most things, the blame does not solely fall on them
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