The 1st "chop"

This is kind of late, but I wanted to tell the story of what I am calling my medium chop. It’s not technically a big chop since I still have a lot of relaxed ends left, but I cut so much hair off (the shortest I have ever had it) that I felt it deserved some sort of title. You may not know this but since moving to Tennessee 5 years ago I have not been able to find anyone to do my hair on a regular basis and have been doing it myself. This is not really a big deal as I have mostly done my hair myself since leaving Mobile with a few trips to salons here and there sprinkled in. Whenever I have needed any professional tips or consults I just called my Aunt-in-law, who is a stylist, or my hairdresser from Mobile. I really did not know of any shops in my area that did African American hair and most of the people I know go somewhere in Nashville or do their own hair like me. When I decided to go natural, I began looking for stylist that worked with natural hair. Since I am so new to this I thought it would be important to have someone that I can get advice and guidance from throughout this process. Well one of the moms of one of the kids in my son ‘s class owns a salon in Murfreesboro so I decided to check it out. After looking at their website it seemed like a good place and they seemed to do natural hair there too! "Great", I thought so I called them up and explained my situation and the fact that I needed a trim because I had so much breakage, I needed to even things up and get my hair to a more healthy state.

During my initial consultation with the hair tech, she was asking things like why I decided to go natural and what I was using in my hair, what kind of relaxer I had used and who had done it. This is when the disapproval and scolding began. It wasn’t as bad as it sounds; it was actually kind of funny. When I told her that I had not only done my own relaxer, but had also done my own hair color. She just looked and shook her head and said well “we will get you fixed up honey and you’ll love your stylist". At this point I was led into the main styling area. This place was quite lovely, they had wonderful calming colors and décor. On the flat screen TV’s they were playing Dreamgirls which was apparently my stylist’s favorite movie because she not only knew every line, but acted out all of the parts and gave commentary. It was quite entertaining I laughed the whole time. She was really nice and I was having a good time. She told me that she was probably going to have to do and actual cut instead of just a trim because of the amount of damage and uneven ends. I told her do what she had to do I would be brave.  Since I wasn’t having her wash my hair she asked the natural question to which I responded very proudly (with my new found natural hair lingo), “Well I washed my hair on Saturday but I co-washed it last night). She said “You what?” the look on her face said not only did she not know what I was talking about, but she thought I must have just spoken in tongues or something. I went on to explain to her exactly what I had done. I explained “Well instead of using shampoo, I washed my hair with conditioner, you know…”. She said again “you what?” So then I started feeling silly, but I thought surely she knows about this. They talk about cowashing all the time on the blogs and all the natural hair websites. Maybe she just needed more reminding about the procedure.” So I tried a few more times to get her to understand what I was saying. She was nice about it but finally said “I have never heard of anyone doing that, maybe you read the directions wrong. Just use shampoo when you wash your hair.” At that point I just left it alone. Then she was making small talk and said “you really do have beautiful hair, and that’s a nice color. Who did your hair color?” I knew where this was going. I told her that I had done my hair color and there it was again the look of disapproval and head shaking (in that bless her heart way). I was getting in trouble again. She even said, “ next time you come in, you’re going to let me wash your hair and style it too”. I said in a sarcastically funny way “ you mean with shampoo and conditioner???” we both had a good laugh. I let her feel like she was right and that I was naïve to hair care. I would have felt very silly had I not done many hours of reading and research before I went in. I would definitely say this is an important part of going natural because there is so much misinformation and many misinformed people out there. If you don't know your facts, you could very easily doubt your decisions and be swayed to do things that are counterproductive to your goal. Overall, the experience was fun and find and she did a great job with the cut as you all saw In the post with my pics from the haircut. I will probably continue to let her cut my hair throughout this process and just in case you were wondering I will continue to co-wash my hair, but that’ll be our little secret. Until next time…