The Mystery Unveiled, Part 1

The unfathomable mystery of a black woman's hair. If you have been kept awake at night wondering about the difference between a weave and a weft, braids and corn rows, then this is the post for you. If you have so wanted to ask "Is that real?" but never worked up the courage... read on!

During my past several years of living with black girls I have been baptised into the often complicated, always painful, and sometimes downright harrowing world of the black woman's hair.

Ok, to begin with, if you have to ask the question, "Is that real?" it probably isn't. Or at least, partially isn't.

The black women I know spend an awful amount of time and effort on their hair. This usually revolves around a regular visit to some sort of salon, or friend, or even random person with hair skills. Now this is a real event. As a white women you are probably comparing this to your experiences in the hair salon getting a cut. Don't. This is like comparing the latest copy of Fair Lady to Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karinina. They may both have words and sentences and pages, but the similarity is about that deep. White woman, you have only dabbled in the shallows of hair care.

For the black woman, this regular hair even lasts at the very least a couple of hours, and it sometimes stretches to two days. Depending on the environment, it could entail caring for the children of your hair dresser or feeding the longsuffering souls who are doing your hair. If you are going to a more informal sort of salon, possibly run from someones home, it will probably entail waiting for a couple of hours while other people's hair is finished off.

Now the length of this whole process depends primarily on what exactly you are going to your hair. Now this is where you hear phrases like corn rows and braids and weaves and wefts and bonding and yucky bulk. And frankly, I'm entirely out of my league here. So let me just tell you about some of the styles I have seen, knowing hat I am not doing justice to this huge topic.

Corn rows: This is where you braid your hair, almost like french plaitting it, close to your head. This is pretty fast, as hair styles go. And you can style it in different ways, making patterns with the corn rows.

Braids: Now I think this is a generic term that can also include corn rows. But here I use it to mean when your hair looks like it is in many many plaits. This can either take quite quick or very very long, depending on the size of the braids you are getting. You can get thick braids, maybe half a centimeter or so in diameter - that will be pretty quick as hair goes. On the other side, you can get tiny tiny braids, that are maybe a millimeter or so in diameter. Now we are talking about 24 hours of braiding to get your hair done...
These sorts of braids are now falling into the "hair extensions" category, because it isn't just your own hair in those little plaits. With your own hair you plait in some sort of hair extension stuff. This is what the mysterious and unfortunately named "yacky bulk" is. The hair extensions are either synthetic hair or real hair that you buy in a packet from a shop. And depending on how thick you want your individual braids to be and how thick you want your full head of braided hair to be, you could buy two or three packets of hair extensions to braid into your hair. Yacky bulk is just one of the kinds of hair extensions. And of course hair extensions come in the high end brought-back-from-a-posh-salon-in-Zimbabwe kind right down to the low end bought-at-Pep-stores kind.

... to be continued.