What’s Gin’s Hair secret?
So whenever a curly haired person, especially if they’re mixed, comes across another curly haired person, there’s this instant connection
Of course, business first: This business merger needs to be made. Thing needs to be saved, but let’s talk about hair.
Right away there’s this instant knowledge. Like what? What’s your journey been and I’m so glad that it’s different now. I was my kid had to go to the hospital the other day and I saw this young woman who was light skinned with like bright red hair, and it was like thick and African. I was like, yeah. I just wanted to go over and just give her a hug and a high five.
But for a lot of us who are a little bit older.
A lot of people had the same experience that I did where maybe one parent didn’t know what to do with their hair. Straighten their hair, right? So remember the scalp burning and all of that. And that message is really clear that your hair is not good, that it needs to be fixed.
What is natural about you needs to be changed.
And it’s like one of those things that reinforces that impulse to try and fit in. I’m so glad that there’s so many products that are for our hair that celebrate our hair. It’s a big journey to see yourself a different way and say, okay, I love this self.
I love my mom, but she was a beauty queen.
And she fit in with the standards of the day. So this is the sixties. So she was a flight attendant, right? And to be a flight attendant in the sixties, creme de la creme. And then to be a beauty queen among those, there was a standard, if you see the graduation photos and I have one somewhere. All the legs are at the exact same angle. The hair is exactly the same. The little hat is at exactly the same angle. They had the flick test where everybody had to wear girdle, and you, the man invariably, I think, would go around and if a flight attendant wasn’t wearing their girdle, if there was any kind of womanly jiggle when they flicked your ass.
Literally you, they, you could be excused from work, right? All of these things. You had to get on a scale. You couldn’t be above a certain age. You you couldn’t be married and have this profession. She was coming from that world and she was a champion at that world. But then you take it into the rest of the real world and you have a daughter that does not who’s not born fitting all of those things right. It can get a little difficult.
And so I am just really grateful for what all those products communicate too. They wanna communicate that they wanna make money off of me. I’m not gonna fault them, that they gotta pay for the kids at, college education. But to also have products that let my hair be soft, natural, healthy. We didn’t necessarily have that growing up. And not be like straw, it’s, yeah, I’m freaking grateful.
And if somebody’s in the middle of nowhere where there aren’t those products, I want them to know that these products exist, right? And that they’re secretly part of the curly hair club, and that they, us curies, want you to be in that club and we welcome you.
I’m Gin Hammond and I’m Living IncogNegro.
I’m glad you’re here and we’re on this journey together.
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