Weave Or Natural Hair - ''They Treated Me Differently When I Had Weave'' - #Ic3P

All right welcome everybody. This is an episode of i see free, but we've got 30 mils of melanin in here today. Welcome girls. Thank you for coming on. First, we've got some great topics that we're going to speak about today. It'S a whole long process, especially if you're doing it yourself and then not only that if you're keeping your natural hair out, you have to look after it every day. I can't have an afro today and keep that same afro in for a week or i'm gon na have to shave my whole head off yeah, because it's gon na be a nappy mess. That'S true because during lockdown i decided to just be natural: okay can be done. There are some men that look after their hair. Well, like you uh how? How do you keep your hair like this? But the thing is: that's a guy's hairstyle girls don't have hairstyles like that and our hair the longer we have it out it's prone to breakage it breaks. So we do protective styling. We cover it up. We came right back thrown a wig because it allows us to maintain our hair. Our hair is really prone to breakage, because the way our hairs are tightly curled, the oils and nutrients have a hard time getting to the bottom yeah and it depends. You'Ve got a protective hair styling in and he's got a protective hair styling right now, yeah, and so do you, i'm sure you've got one under your um. Everyone'S got protection when you do something so when you seal the ends to stop it from breaking yeah. So your ends are sealed, there's going to be less breakage, so so are yours, but with females, if we have our afros out, our hair could be breaking like even even rubbing on pillows yeah split ends. Your hair can break if you was to take those twists out and just leave your hair out. You wouldn't do that. You wouldn't leave it out just in its natural space. Well, you would why you're different. We wouldn't do that. We just wouldn't do that. A lot of black women wouldn't do that because it's messy your hair is going to break yeah. It depends on to something permanent yeah. I love them, but i wouldn't want something permanent. You can get braids on top of them, get them braided. Now one of my one of my colleagues, she has long dreads and she just wants to get rid of them now, as you said, exactly what you guys are saying, you know they're limited. Why not the short hair amber rose? Look then, why not yeah we did. I would love to do that. I'Ve shaved, my hair off once yeah we like to change it up yeah. I was bold deluxe as well. My cousin anthony herwig she's bold. So, are you saying basically it's more expression, yeah than being boxed in and not being able to? No, it's both. I think it's a mixture of oh, it's, a mixture of um society. It'S a mixture of hair maintenance. It'S hard to maintain your hair, also make sure if you don't your hair to break also. Some people are scared to go job interviews in their natural hair because they're scared. They might not get the job because of this country. You know so you might throw in a straight wig just for the job yeah yeah, so shout out to nels this. This is on nelson, my friend nelson, my friend. He has here like paul all right looking around for someone like that. He actually looks like marco anderson's, always joking a bit longer. He works at a you know, a nice by society. Standing as a nice place. You know it's a bank so to speak old. Lady came in, he told me the story old lady came in um. You know she's sending some check or whatever and she goes. Oh you've been nursing sweet like you meet him, just love it he's in his hot space, he's sweet guys. She does. He deals with him. Oh you know you're, just so wonderful. I just love my service. Today, but you should cut your hair off, that's what she said: real, quick. Yes, she said what color was she? Oh. I think i think she was white. I think she was white yeah. Maybe we're going to that. This is the 60s 70s yeah. They do not like dreads, i'm telling you you see, you see my you see my granddad, my gravitation, like even any interaction. We have any interaction if it's like, we haven't seen each other for a year or whatever any interaction. We have the first thing you'll say to me: is why do they have that view? Has it like? Do you know why that view is because i don't know, is it like a do? They view it as like rebellion or something it's kind of. I think it's like a rust like a but he's being serious, but did you see that video in the u.s, where a young black, a young black guy, was doing a wrestling match and they um shaved his hair off? He had dreads like quite long dreads like waist length and they shaved off because they said it was inappropriate for him to actually wrestle and during the wrestling match. They'Re like got clippers that i shaved all his dreads off. Why didn't him do that? Yeah? Did he not? Did he not punish them? He wanted no, he wanted to. He wanted. He went on to win, but the boy was crying and like all of his teammates, were there like just go for it. Just do it like you'll, be all right all right and i just thought: that's good. That'S a visual representation of what you're saying traveling. I wanted to travel here yeah. One time i wanted to travel and i'd cut. My i was starting off to say that. However, i'm starting off maybe a bit longer and i kept i kept just giving up because it's tough like when you're at this stage and you're doing dreads like you just look crazy. I kept people kept telling me. Oh, why don't you just cut your hair? You know the nice ways of saying just cut your hair off you're, dead, dusty, didn't, keep saying this stuff and then um one barber. I went to rastafarian, he goes to me so i went in and i was just like yeah just take it all off and he was like what coffee dreads. That'S what i said my hair's a deep jamaican accent. Basically, he said not me, i'm not doing it. Yeah he said he said he said: i'm i'm not going to be that one today yeah, that's why i have these dreads today like when. I tell you like from from what he said. It was like his energy got placed onto me and it made me realize. Okay, like it is a it's a very easy fight, it is a fight, it's something that you fight for. It'S something that you have to it's it's not about appearance. It doesn't that doesn't matter, it's actually deeper than that. It'S a yeah. I had them for about three years, but i wasn't like i didn't know how to look after them and my mom didn't look after them, so i just looked like a proper like mess, so we just cut them off, and my mom grew hers for, like 15 Years but she had um psoriasis in the scalp, so she had to cut them off because it was just their scalp was so bad, but dreads are beautiful. Yeah i'll be honest, like with seen me um, one of the another reason why i grew dredges, because i'm not a guy who likes to get trims all the time. I'Ll be honest, like trims all the time as well. Every two weeks - and i just i just wanted something different - i just wanted not to be able to do that. I didn't know what i was getting into. I didn't know that i was i you actually have to manage them as such, but you don't actually because i i literally treated my drugs like trash. Maybe you can see it because they're not really that nice drugs, but all i really all i literally do is every three four months. I just get someone to interlock yeah yeah. That'S it! That'S it! That'S maintenance. I want to say one last thing on it as well, because i wanted to cover two topics as well, but i want to give um just one last thing for you. I want to give you ratings and and um warren ratings and shane as well, because that's a big part of it. I ask but sometimes i'll play the devil's advocate, because there's a bit of me being a hypocrite and i didn't realize i've never had my hair. This long in it it's the first time, i'm ever growing my heart when i was he would not even go a week without getting the treatment back in the day. That'S a bit extreme, but basically the way it was yeah from when i was young. My mom just used to cut my hair, like i think my first haircut was just before one or something like that, which apparently is not good yeah, but the thing is, i didn't realize it's only the other day i looked back because i'm looking in the mirror And i'm, like you know, i kind of like this now like, and i realized her doing that, partly because she came from zimbabwe in it so coming over. Even my surname is is a tongue twister for that, but my first name is gavin, which is very easy. Like if you see gavin on paper yeah - and i yeah one of the things she did, is she did that so that i didn't get sort of x doubt because of my name yet for one and two one of the reasons why she always wanted me to Have my hair cut is because of that, because she didn't want me to black. Do you get what i'm saying yeah so it's like, and now that i've started to grow it and that's realized that it actually put like a kind of like the subconscious thing in me where i like even like when me and john first started our business like We'Ve got a creative design business and i used to think to myself when we're meeting clients and that we're in a big office. Isn'T that, like? I, don't want them to think away of me, because i've got like that. Yeah like a profit. I never used to really say it, but that was part of it like yeah. That'S why, even when i'm like um, i think he's uh brazilian the same way, we kind of discuss the issues that black women have in society with our own natural hair. Do you, as men feel, like you, have those same kind of difficulties in the way that your hair represents you and how people view you? I think i think so i think yeah to a degree. Definitely because you just spoke on it as well, both of us, but we it's not it's. It'S like a taboo for us to speak on that stuff like it goes into the thing of you, i feel like a lot of men. You guys get stereotyped on your hair type, so, like police will see a group of black boys depending on your hair, they can stereotype you and want to you know, search you. You know and associate your hair with um the typical identity of gangs. Remember as well. Oh sorry, because you're just reminding us remember in the early days of like black people and caribbean's coming over to the uk, rastafarians were a problem. Yeah remember like the dreadlocks and they were the ones coming over. That'S the perception and i think for connotation with like weed because it comes from like they had a negative connotation then, whereas now a lot of people are doing it and the connotation against weed is coming off, but back then, and even like culture. So like pop um, r, b and stuff, now that we see artists doing certain styles with their hair, men are starting to embrace their hair more, but then they didn't so i think, covered helped it's okay. When men can cut their hair, i think the more we see it, it normalizes normalizes it and then we get used to it because i never used to like guys with hair because it wasn't common growing up and then i never. I used to hate it because it was just something i had never known and then the more i saw it, the more i got used to it. I started to like it, so i think generalizing things even natural hair before we see girls with natural hair will be generalized and it will become more acceptable as well. Do you know what what hit me the other day like i started a new position, interview yeah and now i'm deepening it now like i'm deep in it yeah that's what i was doing. You know what, when we go into situations where it's like formal and professional, we do kind of whether it, whether it's on that, whether it's our natural hair or whether we're putting a wig on or putting braids in it's it's about bringing your best self forward. So, even though it may looking back feel like you were trying to make yourself different, you were just trying to put yourself together, see i've been to interviews with my natural hair and i've always got like. I don't know some people have that hindrance where they feel like they're not going to be accepted because of the way the hair is and yeah for some jobs, especially the more corporate the position is. It might feel like that. I intended to work in a prison with my head. My little nappy ass afro, like it was fine. Now i work in social care because everyone's it's cool everyone freestyles with their hair yeah. You know we're support workers when i was in the corporate world. If i was in my natural hair, i was treated so differently when i had long weave yeah they treated me like. I was on a higher pedestal, higher level when i had leaving. So i noticed the change in behavior, so they were, you know they will discriminate against you based on your hair and that's sad sorry. What you said really resonated with me is because um since islamophobia i used to wear a hijab back then, and since then i felt really intimidated wearing i felt like people would judge me if i wore one. So you know when you went to the interview tied your hair back, i started conforming the other way to become more western, because i felt like if i was to present myself as a muslim, i would be discriminated against. So, even like me having my hair, like this, it's more appeasing to my employers, whereas if they saw me in a corporate office with my hair in my hijab, they might not actually want me there. So you know it is that whole appealing to who? Why are we conforming is because we want, you know we want to get jobs yeah. We want to appeal to. You, know society. Yes, i will say this: is there something wrong with that, though? No, i don't think there's anything wrong with that. I mean myself, but sometimes it's easier to fit in. Like me, i keep a low fade in a white tee. I keep a low fade all the time. I'Ve never actually thought about here, but there's something you said which i want to speak to. Where are we drawing our confidence from yeah, because i feel like there's people that have probably gone to you said it you've gone to a job interview with your hair normal and been able to land it and there's sometimes where you could. Some people may feel like they need to know before a wiggle or whatever yeah to land the job. I think we have to go beyond that to see where we actually getting our confidence from yeah. I think it comes up not completely, but i think a lot of it resonates from our childhood, because psychology says the first seven years of a child's life is the most impactful and pretty much determines who they become as an adult. So the ways that you're treated the things that bring you confidence during that childhood time. The way you interact with people tends to carry forwards with you into adulthood, for example, there's certain things that i had as big insecurities based on the way i was treated as a child, but looking at my younger sis - okay, let's say - let's say skin color, just Briefly onto colorism, i wasn't treated the same as my sister, who was fair-skinned, but the issues we both have going into adulthood. I felt like maybe i was too dark and she felt like she was capable of basically doing what she wanted to do. Yeah. She was more capable or saying my younger sister, who had extremely long hair because she was jamaican indian and i didn't have that. So. The attention that was paid to my hair in comparison to the attention paid to hers has shown who we are as adults. She'S completely natural, she don't care because her hair's always been propped big up like you've got beautiful hair, whereas for myself i had to get over that kind of um childhood trauma that came from it. So i think that a lot a lot of that and how you feel about yourself comes from from from that's right. I think i think it's the media as well, if we had more of a representative media where it showed women with their natural hair women in hijab's women, anything like without makeup, it's a media that makes us feel like we have to conform to this idea of Beauty and if you think about it, hitler had this concept of their aryan race, blue eyes, blonde hair. And if you put, if you put that on the spectrum, they will people assume that's what the idea of beauty is blonde hair and blue eyes. But that is actually recessive genes, it's actually weak yeah they're, actually the weakest genes and the strongest genes are the most dominant genes. Are the darker traits having darker hair darker skin? But why is it that society and it's because if you think about it, the percentage of white people on the planet is far less than the people of color or melanin. Do you know what i mean majority? Is the minority exactly and they have to make themselves? They have to make themselves feel superior because otherwise we will outnumber them survival tactics yeah exactly and we will outnumber them. If you think about the resources in africa, the resources even in asia, europe doesn't have the same america. Obviously it doesn't either. There was the silk road which went through where africa, asia it went through there and that's where trains. I think one of the major major things for us is disconnection with where we come from, i guess, and then also the certain leaders and what we have back home, like the people that are controlling everything we have back home are not necessarily you know, anybody gets Anyone to do anything good, they usually i ever get voted out because of money or because of because a fear of death and this type of stuff, so there's certain corruption that goes on within some of the countries where we're originally from that affects the way. Our back home countries can operate in a it's really in a less yeah uh like when you call it third world yeah country. So i feel like as well like a lot of us here. The problem is we we here, we are we're here and we become yeah. We become like western yeah. We become here. So it's very hard for us to think. Okay, you know what i'm going to take all my knowledge that i've learned. We'Ve got brilliant people here that make this country brilliant and make other countries brilliant all around the world in europe, but the brilliance is not brought back to where they're originally from and because of this. We will still have these um problems back home and then people that come into the country are still going to have these problems and then, even here, the lack of things that we see on the tv, the lack of women different hair skin size. It'S never going to be equal unless you know it's properly infiltrated, but at the end of the day, you've got to look at it like this. We live in the united kingdom yeah and when you look at it everywhere outside of london has a big big, big white culture i mean, and for us it's very hard because we all live in london, so we don't see it but out there. It'S just so many um europeanest people not that they all have the same views, because they don't especially the younger ones and, as i always want to say as well like a lot of younger european people that live here who come from like english backgrounds. They don't have obviously the same views as their parents and whatnot, because they've been born into a different society, but the problem is right now we're in a place where the people that control everything still have those views whereby you know they're still gon na promote the People that look the whitest yeah, that look, you know most likely, you know, and there is that problem, but hopefully with time that will change. But at the same time, i feel like it's down to us to make those changes, because i see a lot of brilliant people go down the wrong path, because their focus is on the wrong place and a lot of these people could be focusing on different things. You know, and and putting their um their minds to to to greater the the people that, where they're from in this country now and push us a um, there was forward case in hackney a young girl. I think she was 10 or 11.. She was mixed-race, but her her hair was kinky, so it was like afro and she was told to put her hair back because it was disrupting other children's learning. Her parents took that case to the tribunal and they actually got compensated. I think ten thousand pounds or something, but it's the fact that she pursued it, but the fact that she went through it, it just put another law to say you can't discriminate against hair. So, the more that you do push these boundaries, the more laws will have to change right and the more that we can actually move like have some progress and it's nice yeah, but is the fact that she's done that i could. I could guarantee you if this was five years back. Yeah person wouldn't have done it yeah. Now, if any one of us in this room i guarantee, if that happened to us, we would push it forward. Yeah. Exactly that's the weird thing, because i remember kids having had their hair all types in primary school and secondary school, when did it get social? You know what looks prim and proper like all of these