Am I the only one who has caught the ‘au naturelle’ bug? Recently there has been a strong influence of having natural hair amongst black people. This influence is notably called the ‘The Natural Hair’ Movement.

From a time where girls as young as 2 years old were having their hair permed by their mothers because the natural African hair was not deemed as beautiful/manageable to having young fashionable girls cut off their permed hair in order to grow the natural African hair, I can say that the Natural Hair Movement has had a very positive impact. I was also influenced to cut off my permed hair and grow my natural hair back, because my views about the African Natural hair changed drastically.

From celebrities like Solange Knowles and Becca to everyday people rocking the natural hair, we have seen that you can still look very beautiful with your God given hair texture. I have also realized that going natural is not just about hair, but about self-acceptance. Every race has certain physical attributes that are peculiar to them, and you do not see them modifying these features to look more like another race.

For some reason, Africans have been made to believe that our natural self is not considered as beautiful and as such we go through various means to change who we are. People bleach their beautiful melanin full black skin in order to look lighter. Others change their beautiful African accent to sound more polished; it doesn’t matter if they’ve ever seen the inside of a plane or not.

Some people even make it a point to avoid speaking their local dialects, resorting to only English. We put harmful chemicals to straighten our hair in order to look westernized.

It is high time we embrace who we are as a people. Beauty is not wearing tons of Brazilian hair and makeup that you are hardly recognizable without them. Beauty is not changing your skin color from rich smooth chocolate color to a mixture of rainbow colors. Beauty is loving yourself, the way God created you. Beauty is having confidence in yourself, because you know there is much more to you than your physical appearance.

I am in by no means advocating that everybody should go natural, I only want to create awareness about how beautiful we are as a people, and how important it is that we love who we are.