Love your natural hair

THE EDITOR, Madam:

As we celebrate our national heroes, in paying homage to the first designated one, Marcus Garvey, we should endeavour to have his teachings comprehensively presented throughout our schools and educational institutions and also tackle head-on colonial psychological legacies, which continue to negatively shape our perceptions of beauty, self-worth, and what look is acceptable, and where. Much too often, issues and controversy arise as to how the hair of black students in Jamaica should be coiffed and presented for acceptance in our educational institutions.

There is, of course, most unfortunately, the skin bleaching, which has been increasingly decried but persists. Then there is the not so decried excessive and unwarranted wearing of wigs of other people’s hair-type, which our naturally beautiful and more than adequately hair-endowed black women lavish money on, sometimes actually buying other people’s hair. Why?

The apparently growing prevalence of such wearing of wigs (spending precious foreign exchange) to have bought imported long ‘straight hair’ resting on shoulders has made too many of us, unnecessarily, into ‘mimic women’. The phenomenon underscores the pervasive influence of absorbed Eurocentric beauty standards.

Natural black hair is incredibly versatile and wonderfully unique. From afros to braids, locs to twists, cornrows to whatever, there are countless ways to style and celebrate black hair. As we honour our heroes, let us reclaim, manifest, and celebrate the natural beauty with which we are all blessed. Remember, Marcus Garvey exhorted us to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery. Hear him and let us try more to achieve that as we celebrate Garvey and our other national heroes.

ANDREA BARNES

Gordon Town, St. Andrew