Just For Me Brand Targets Children With “Texture Softeners"

This is a pretty interesting topic which makes for great a great discussion and maybe some serious change. We all know Just For Me right? they had the cute little jingle with the little girls showing off healthy looking straight hair; happy, smiling giving the brand authenticity through a well made commercial.

We all knew it was a relaxer, albeit mild, but a relaxer just the same. Nowadays the brand has shifted its focus to “texture softeners”, which means “It is for hard-to manage hair, it mildly loosens curls and kinks that cause hair to tangle and break during combing.” It allows for “Long hair that grows without the breakage from combing”.

Hmm…I can just hear the jingle now.

Do you feel as if your natural hair needs managing? Do you feel as if your little girl’s natural hair needs managing? I guess what I am asking is, is there a market for this type of product and is the market big enough where a company might want a piece of it.

Are there still women who find their texture “unmanageable”?

The answer is yes, we see it daily, women talking about how difficult their texture is or needed help to deal with their daughters hair because it gets so tangled, dry and hard. We do not believe any texture is unmanageable, we talk about how to manage our hair on a daily basis so that should definitely not be an issue.

In some instances even though the texture of your hair might be manageable as a parent you might just prefer a looser texture for yourself and for your daughters and this is where brands like Just For Me try to capitalize. This is especially true in the light that texture discrimination exists in some areas of our community.

I read Christina’s article on BGLH and she was on point in every paragraph. Christina made the point that one way or another this relaxer company and others are going to try to recoup the money lost from relaxer sales, this might mean pushing a product that is clearly a mild relaxer covering it up with some of the very insecurities we are trying to prevent.

Ethnic and multi-ethnic children, especially little girls, realize the values that society places on outer appearances, especially what may make them different, much sooner than you might think. Little girls form their self-image early and are impacted by messages and other influences in their environment. By the time your daughter begins to interact socially with friends or family members or take in the many messages in the media, she will have some idea about her image and how others may view her.

In order to ensure your daughter has a healthy self-concept, it is important to begin talking to her about her identity as soon as possible so that you can instill in her a strong self-esteem and a healthy self-image. It is just as important to de-emphasize the importance of outer beauty and communicate to her that her beauty begins on the inside. Because we believe this is crucial for little girls, Just for Me™ Texture Softener™ tapped nationally renowned clinical psychologist Dr. Jeff Gardere to offer ways to start the dialogue with your child.

Keep reading, it gets better:

Proactively talk about loving your daughter’s hair. Your daughter’s hair is unmistakably linked to her self-image and self-esteem. If she feels her hair is a problem, she will also think there is a problem with her image. If she believes her hair is beautiful, she will believe that she is beautiful.

Your little girl will take her cues from you, her mother. Be careful not to inadvertently pass along negative feelings through the frustrations of everyday grooming.

When companies get it all wrong

Are they though? We have to be careful about the messages we send to these companies, that whole thing that I just quoted is so shocking I cant even tell you what I thought the first time I read it. The Just For Me brand using a clinical psychologist to pick apart our children’s issues with self image?

What sad about it is, what they are saying might just be something a woman in such a position would buy into, because of the society we live in today.

The images girls are seeing are of women who put a high value on self image, even when they sport curly hair it is probably hair that is looser curl pattern in comparison to what actually grows out of their own head.

One thing is for sure our little girls will take our cues from us, and we do inadvertently pass all our feelings to them, positive or negative, so I agree with them there.

Most of us have bad hair days sometimes and it is ok to share that with our little girls but are we frustrated daily? Of course not but when we are frustrated how do we turn that experience into a positive one instead of one overflowing with negativity?

Make the right choice

These companies are around touting these messages because somebody is out their listening and making purchases.We can argue all day long about companies sending the wrong message and selling relaxer to our kids by a different name but what we really need to do is stop supporting them if we really feel that strongly about it.

This comes down to choice, you know that other texture management systems that have been very popular lately, many women of influence including celebrities as well as popular naturals chose to endorsed them and for me the message was pretty confusing. If you create content based on managing your hair as is then why support a company that has products geared towards changing your hair texture even if your hair texture comes back. Sips kermit tea?

Let us continue to teach our girls the value of what they have naturally and give them the strength to look at media and decide that who they are is perfectly fine despite what they see on television and on the internet.

Hair care starts right there at home in her cotton candy room and princess bathroom, just mommy and her, that is where self esteem is built and where her image of herself is garnished.

We do not need anything in a box with a bunch of ingredients we can’t pronounce to manage our hair, and our girls need to understand that completely, don’t you agree?