two months after moving back to America from Japan, i've finally done what i've been dreaming about doing for years...! that is, cutting off my butt-length locs of 11 years-- i.e., the #BigChop...
whether we want it to be or not, #BlackHair is often Political, especially in its’ natural, unstraightened state. combine this with #Blackness itself...
as the clock counts down to me sitting in a hairstylist's chair to get my hair chopped off—a clock that started its countdown years ago in my head, but has only recently been given a definitive calendar date of May 18th, 2019—i've on-and-off made an effort to help my mom 'get over it.'
cw: rape apologism …so i just had lunch with someone who is essentially a random woman who chased me down at a train station last week because she admired my locs and wanted me to start locs for her. had this woman not been a black woman, had she not been an older black woman, had she not been literally beaming from ear to ear just looking at my locs, so earnest about wanting to start locs herself and having nowhere to turn– had it not been for all those things AND had we not been in Japan, i wouldn’t have given this lady the time of day. especially since she made me miss my train. but she was and we are and so there i was, meeting this over zealous woman at a cafe for lunch because #AfroHairSolidarityInAsia✊? if only the conversation had steered clear of politics, things would have been fine. i…
damn right i’m gonna post selfies after having spent a day doing my hair and having just shot a YouTube video. lol why i gotta always look younger than i am, though… sigh.
queerascat: …you know you have a problem when 3 out of the 4 hats that you own are exactly the same hat in exactly the same colors (black / gray / white) just in different patterns / materials. to be fair, though, the latest (solid black) one was half the price of the others despite being the same brand and everything, so of course i’m going to buy it. i mean, solid black is my thing– if anything, you’d have thought it’d have been the first hat i’d have bought, right? hmph. ;( more random thoughts about hats because i’m exceptionally longwinded tonight, apparently. …is it odd that i only got into hats once my hair started falling into “wow, your hair’s long feminine!” category in people’s eyes? like, before that i never even really gave hats any thought. now it’s almost like i feel a need to wear a hat…
aaahhh, more annoying Japanese TV. despite what i said (in Japanese) while letting off steam livetweeting on Twitter, i know it’s not fair of me to expect anyone, let alone this guy (Jun Soejima, an actor / “talent” btw), to react any certain way or educate the people around him on behalf of other black people in Japan. i really don’t actually expect that or anything else of him, despite my whining, but it does admittedly annoy me when people on Japanese TV just laugh off some really shitty, problematic stuff that people say or do to them, be it re: racial issues, trans issues, or anything else. they’re in a difficult situation and have all kind of things to consider when they react to something, whereas i can huff and puff at the TV saying all the choice words i like without consequence. i get that…. but meh. it was…
today was another one of those days. after showering i looked in the mirror. why did i do that?? i knew what i’d see and how it’d make me feel. then i spent 2.5 hours doing my hair, only to have to fight the urge to cut it once i was done. again. i love my hair and yet i don’t. no one would dare try to talk me out of cutting it once i told them how it’s so heavy that it gives me headaches when i wear it in a pony tail to keep it out of the way for a prolonged period of time, or how it hurts my neck while washing it because it becomes so heavy with water; how i go through so much product that is expensive to import and how it takes 10hrs to fully dry, which sucks all kinds of hell in…
trigger warning: body negativity, gender dysphoria, hints of self-harm, cursing a rant about my own negative body image and how that body image intersects with my identity as a black non-binary asexual. i touch upon a lot in this long video, so for your ease of viewing: ====== Time Points ======== @00:00 – introduction @00:57 – dismissal of my body issues @02:18 – height and dysphoria @05:08 – having lordosis and being misgendered @09:53 – hypersexualization of my butt as a black non-binary ace @12:44 – hypersexualization of my lips as a black non-binary ace @13:27 – self-destructive habits: lip picking @15:33 – hating my natural hair @19:00 – body modification and body positivity @21:16 – i’d love to hear from you ======================== “awkward but necessary” pretty much sums up this video.
one day the locs that frame my face will be gone and i can’t help but wonder if i’ll even recognize my own face without them— they’ve become such A Thing. either way, the love-hate relationship with my hair continues for now…
