Apologies if this has been brought up before, but...

I'm thinking about growing my hair out long after having it short to mostly very short (i.e. cropped) for about...8 years.  The thing is that I'm of Black/Japanese descent, so my hair is very wavy in parts (with waves of differing lengths) and curly in others, thick, and coarse.  When I had it long I couldn't wait to get it off, since it was so heavy, damaged, and difficult to take care of (as well as a mark of my forced femininity.  However, now I have a _choice_ to have longer hair again, instead of being forced to wear it).  The best descriptor that I have of it is a "lion's mane", because that's basically what it looked like when it was down.  I had a hard time getting anyone to do anything with it other than a blunt or V-cut, because they had never dealt with hair like mine before and were too scared to touch it.

I'm really wary about growing my hair out long again, and I think that if I do this, I will have to get it chemically relaxed or straightened just so that I don't look insane while it's growing out (like I looked last time, before I got frustrated and cut it off again).  When my hair grows, it does not grow so much in visible length; it grows back and forth in waves and tight spirals and mostly just gets more dense.  This is a problem for me because I don't really want an afro--or in my case, my hair just piling up on top of itself so it can't lay down. 

When I first got it cut short, the only thing the haircutter was willing to do was a bob--so I went around with my hair gelled with a headband and a freaking wavy halo for a while because my hair wouldn't lay down.  If I get bangs cut, they stand straight up.  It's like that.

I grew up mostly around my Japanese family and not my Black family, and as a result my ethnic identity is more Asian than Black.  Hence, it's somewhat disturbing to me to have a racial marker to myself that is contrary to my ethnic identity.  For a lot of my life I've wanted to be recognized more as Japanese-American than I am (I'm fourth-generation as well as mixed, so from my experience, I doubt Japanese people from Japan would recognize me as Japanese).  Having a huge amount of curly hair kind of detracts from this.  Other people who don't have to deal with it and have no clue (or don't care) about my ethnic identity think it's cool to have an afro, and want to touch it and all this, but I don't really appreciate the attention.  Nor do I really appreciate people telling me that I should wear wavy hair because I grow wavy hair.

Right now I'm seeing a hairstylist (a family friend) who I think has worked with Filipino hair (which is sometimes like mine, as Polynesian hair was when I was younger), who was the first person unafraid of my hair enough to continue to cut it short without telling me I needed to process it.  (The first guy to ever cut my hair as short as I wanted it was a black guy who I saw with my parents, who gave me a very short, men's haircut which I at the time enjoyed.)

This person--the family friend--has tried out the Japanese hair-straightening technique on my hair, as it's supposed to be safer for the scalp--though I've heard that this can go wrong and *still* damage the scalp?  I'll check out the forum link someone referred to in another topic.  My haircutter is basically experimenting with the Japanese process on my hair and her daughter's hair.  My hair at this point is not long enough to flat-iron, however.  Right now it's about 2" long in the front, but it curls down at that point into compact waves, less than 1/2" across.  Some of my other waves, on other parts of my head, are about 1.5" for one half of the curl (about 2" in hair length).

(underlined for easy reference)

I was thinking of going back to see the hairstylist (the black guy) at Zahra (I think that's the name of the place) so that he could chemically straighten it, but my parents want me to go back to the family friend.  If I went to Zahra, from what I've read, he'd probably use lye; if I go to the family friend, she'll use the Japanese process.  I'm not sure who to turn to.

• My main consideration is whether my scalp will be safe or not.  I don't care about having my hair strands burned on a trial run--I've been nearly bald before, and I don't have much time invested in my hair length.  But my mom has been a victim of having her scalp severely burned by chemical straighteners, and lost a great deal of hair because of it.  _One time_--one time--she got her hair straightened by someone who didn't know what they were doing, and now her hair is very, very thin in spots.  That has been enough to scare me away from chemicals for a long time.
• My second biggest consideration is maintaining the functional integrity of the hair shaft.  I don't want it so severely damaged that I can play with it like a rubber band.  My hair was damaged like that before, and that was associated with a lot of frizz, dullness, breakage, split ends, tangles, porosity, the "curling ribbon" effect, etc.

Now that I'm thinking about it, another consideration--but a branch off of the last one--is that I don't want to snap or rip out my hair by the root while brushing it--which happens when you have very textured hair and you use a brush because you don't know that you shouldn't, and you don't use the right brushing method, because you don't know any better.  When I had long hair, I had very little hair at my temples, and all of that has grown back now.  I also had stray, damaged, broken hairs covering the outer layer of the body of my hair, which weren't long enough to reach my ponytail.  These were the aforementioned 1/2" waves, that covered the rest of my relatively healthy but unseen hair.

I have no problem with my hair not being bone-straight.  But I want these curls at least somewhat straightened out so that I can at least run a comb or brush through it, without it standing several inches away from my face (unless I really decide for a shag and to go for the lion look, as I might).  My face also has very strong features--strong cheekbones, full cheeks, very strong jawline (square shape)--so when I have ultra-short hair, my face overpowers it.  I would like to get out of having to have ultra-short hair without having an afro, and it looks like my only option for that is to get my hair straightened.

It's either this or blow-dry, and in my climate, that doesn't last long.  Blow drying with extreme heat is also something that I really don't like to do, as I know it damages the hair shaft.  Having to blow-dry and straighten my hair, every time I wash my hair, is also a major deterrent from washing my hair, and not washing my hair contributes to acne and oily dandruff, and dandruff is a deterrent from having long hair.

I would try locs, but I have ongoing problems with oily dandruff.  As well, I'm not sure they would work with my hair being as relatively straight as it is (compared to most Black womens' hair that I'm familiar with/admire), and as short as it is.  Then there are braids, and my hair is not long enough for that; even if it was, I also know what damage most braiding (i.e. too-tight braiding) does to the scalp.

How do I find out if a potential hair stylist will not burn my scalp if I go in for chemical relaxing or straightening?  I am a bit emotionally attached to my current hair stylist, but I get the idea that she's experimenting on my head and that maybe I need to go to someone who is used to dealing with Black hair.

I would go into someplace where there is a higher population of Black clientele (and thus more quantitatively experienced stylists), if I weren't wary about getting my hair done by someone with culturally lower standards of care, like I see in braids...where it seems that people just don't care what happens to people's scalps.  If my scalp were getting burnt, I'm so inexperienced that I wouldn't know--my mom got her hair processed for years and says it's "supposed to burn", but I'm not sure that's how it's supposed to work.

Yes, it would help if I gave specific questions, wouldn't it?

• how do I know if someone knows what they're doing when it comes to hair straightening and will not inadvertently physically injure me?
• what should it feel like when I get my hair straightened, if everything goes well?
• is it better to get my hair straightened with lye by someone who knows what they're doing, or via the Japanese process by someone who is experimenting?
• if I get my hair straightened with lye, will I actually lose *all* of my volume?
• how likely is it that I will at one time or another recieve a scalp burn?
• how likely is it that I will at one time or another recieve permanent damage from a scalp burn?
• will processing with lye necessarily make that portion of my hair damaged to the point where it is like a rubber band forever?
• do I even need lye, or will a different treatment option work for me?

(highlighted for emphasis.)

Thank you for reading this far...I noticed there are some stylists on this board.  I would be essentially grateful if any of you could answer this.

--inverse_gravity

It was Steve who gave the link on Japanese hair straightening, second post in this thread:

http://www.hairboutique.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=41563&PN=1 - http://www.hairboutique.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=41563& amp;PN=1

Be well...

inverse_gravity wrote: I grew up mostly around my Japanese family and not my Black family, and as a result my ethnic identity is more Asian than Black.  Hence, it's somewhat disturbing to me to have a racial marker to myself that is contrary to my ethnic identity.  For a lot of my life I've wanted to be recognized more as Japanese-American than I am [...]

I was thinking about what I wrote last night earlier tonight, and how I felt it was wrong for me to reject my Black ancestry, heritage and community in favor of my Asian one.  If you devalue one, are you really going to go up to that parent and say, "I consider you not as good as my other parent?"  That makes me sound bad, but I suppose it's a good epiphany that I came to, that while I do have more exposure to Asian communities than Black ones, this doesn't mean that I love my African-descended parent less, or that she isn't worth as much as my dad.  I mean, that's just messed up.

Even though I know that society devalues Black people in regards to most other people, I know I wouldn't be able to live where I live if it were the other way around and my dad was Black and my mom was Asian.  It's messed up, but it's true.  We would not be middle class.  This kind of stuff is deep programming, and we all have to get past it, and we can't get past it if we don't have the honesty and bravery to question it--in that I'm not necessarily meaning to call myself brave, but I'm asking others to look at their own internalized biases.

And no, I don't mean to say that if you straighten your hair, you have issues with race.  You have the choice to straighten your hair, and choice involves the freedom to actually make the decision to straighten your hair--and I wouldn't have it any other way.  But if you don't, can't love yourself for who you are, because of who society says you are or should be, look inside; love yourself.  There is nothing wrong with you.

The epiphany I came to was that just because society devalues my Black half doesn't mean that I have to, too.  We have enough people pressuring us, telling us that we aren't good enough, that we aren't people as well.  There is absolutely no reason why someone has to agree with that.

While it's true that I haven't had nearly as much exposure to Black communities as I have to Asian ones, this doesn't mean that having the type of hair I do equivocates to being "inferior" or that being Black is not as good as being Asian (although I am certain some of my Asian relatives would say so).  It doesn't mean that even though I've been mostly exposed to Asian standards of beauty, that one cannot be African and beautiful too.  It doesn't mean that I can't embody a type of beauty that no one's ever seen before.

I suppose this would be the type of message board where I would be free to talk about beauty without having to deal with people thinking I was shallow or vain for considering it...after all, most of the site is about taking care of oneself and decorating oneself (I at the moment consider long hair a decoration, and have envied it in others--remember, mine is only 2" long), and making oneself beautiful, at least on the outside.

If I never was honest with myself and never allowed myself to question my own thoughts, I would never have the opportunity to develop inner beauty.  That's why I'm so extremely honest on this board.  I'm extremely honest everywhere.  I need to stop it for my own good.

After thinking about it overnight, I'm considering starting a set of locs instead of getting my hair chemically processed.  This is mainly because I take a lot of pride in having a very thick mane, and although I want to control it at least a little, I don't want to lose it.  I don't want to hurt myself to gain it.  I want to stay healthy too--for my scalp, and my hair shafts, for my morale.  I want to maintain the integrity of my hair while keeping my hair long and beautiful and healthy.  Maybe subculturally I'm also closer to wanting to stay as natural as I can.

I still might continue to consider straightening my hair--but I've got a few months to think it out without being able to process my hair, before I can get locs.

I just wanted to say something about this, and update for you...

This Weird Person's Update, Part Four:

Okay, so today I'm thinking I want to try chemically straightening my hair, again...now that I've worked out some issues.

It would enable me to have a shorter hairstyle and not sacrifice fullness and fluffiness.  It *would* be kinda cool to have a mane again.  To speak honestly, I'd rather have loose hair than felted hair, but my preconception was that if I wanted non-vertical length, I had to have loose hair with high long-term risk to my scalp, or felted hair with low long-term risk to my scalp.

If everything went according to the way I would have wanted it, I would have been born with straight hair so that I wouldn't have to go through this (reminding me of my transgendered posse--and don't jump on me about that either, as I'm gender-variant and have considered transition), but that's not how it turned out.

It's come to my attention IRL that I have a number of misconceptions about chemical straightening (like that my hair would be necessarily severely damaged, that my scalp would likely be burned, etc).  I would appreciate it if people could help me clear these up, and tell me how to avoid the dangers associated with chemical relaxing or straightening.

I found out that the person who wanted to use Thermal Reconditioning on my hair actually is trained in it, so after my hair gets long enough to iron, I can see her.

I would also appreciate it if people (not just hairstylists) could respond to the questions posed in my original post.  I worded the last few lines in that post badly.

Mom tells me to stop obsessing about my hair, so I'll go do something else, now.

Thank you all for listening to me!

--I.G.