The Look: Polished versus Unpolished

Wig Styling by Benita Blocker. (The polished look)

This article was inspired by the 2016 Olympics in Rio surrounding Gabby Douglas' hair.

I disagreed with negative comments that I heard firsthand such as:

"I can not believe she came back to the Olympics with her looking like that again after all the complaints about her hair at the 2012 Olympics.  What did she expect?"

In my opinion, Gabby Douglas showed up to the Olympics to compete and win.  She was not in a pageant or a sales meeting presenting a sales pitch.  She is an athlete.  It is a little hard to worry about hairline edges holding straight while executing gymnastics.

This insensitivity to Gabby Douglas' natural texture being unique to her hit a personal note with me.

A polished look is typically composed of new clothes, new shoes, smooth edges, pearl necklace, pearl earrings, no hair out of place and so on.

I had a similar situation going on while working for Carolinas Healthcare System.  As a hairdresser at a nursing home, dressy casual was my standard for the amount of manual labor required to care for the residents in a skilled nursing facility.  Apparently, my last manager really never understood the scope of the work that I performed in the nursing home beauty shop.

A meeting between my last manager and the Regional Human Resources Director yielded such comments as "you are very polished" by the Regional HR Director all the way to "you trying to get me fired" by my last manager.  Apparently, he did not expect me to dress up for the meeting.  He apparently did not know me well.

I know how to dress on many different levels.  It is all costume.  True beauty and true ugliness comes from inside the soul.

To clarify, unkempt edges has nothing to do with intellect nor skill set.  It just means that one is confident enough to be seen in one's own God given beauty without the need to submit themselves to look like the "polished" upper echelon all the time.

Marriage, Mates, and Natural Hair 2015

(Very happily divorced mainly because I entered into marriage for all the wrong reasons.)

Situation #1
I have had many MARRIED women approach me in public about going natural or Loc'ing their hair, but they can not because their husbands do NOT like "the natural look."  Some ladies say their husbands prefer for them to wear a weave or a wig versus their natural hair.  In addition, some wives have been told that if their natural hair was a little looser then their husbands would be more okay with their wife going natural.  These wives admit that they want to keep their husband happy so they comply.

Questions:
1) Have relaxers created a fraudulent perception of Black hair?
2) Is it healthy for women to feel trapped between keeping their husbands happy and learning to embrace their God given hair texture?
3) If wigs and weaves are more acceptable than kinky hair, then would shaving women's heads and just maintaining hair replacement/cranial prosthesis make more sense?

Situation #2
Sleeping with a hair bonnet, rollers, or a head scarf is not acceptable by some husbands in the initial years of marriage.  After about ten years of marriage, many of these husbands relax the rules, and the wives are more flexible with doing what is necessary at night to make styling their hair easier the next morning.  We all know that women born with wavy and straight hair naturally gain length quicker and without breakage.  Lower maintenance natural loose hair is always going to be more manageable.  This type of hair does not make the women any smarter, brighter, or more educated.  It just means less to no "bad hair days."

Many Black women turn to loc'ing their hair to achieve the low maintenance lifestyle, but many men still do not like the texture of the hair in locs.  Of course, many men do, but women have to be aware that the lightness or darkness of their skin plays a part in how some men choose a mate.  Hair texture is no exception either.

Questions:
1) Have successful  Black men become so accustomed to the European standards of a polished image that this mindset plays into how they choose who to marry?  (i.e. Many Black male celebrities choose to marry outside of the Black race.)

2) Do many Black women choose to be single over having to conform to the image that some Black men prefer?

3) Does a man's self esteem really reflect in the way the woman looks that he carries on his arm?

ANSWERS:  I hoping to get some men to weigh in on these situations and mindsets.  Any takers???

On a Separate note: I used ombre lip coloring with a center transition color in my picture above. I needed to remind myself so that I will not look back two years from now and ask about my lip color.