Relaxers Vs. Naturals

Its funny how much people expect from natural hair but nothing from relaxed hair.
Relaxed. Supposed to relax your life or something and everything's all good?

So I spent the 4th of july weekend with 4 of my girlfriends at the beach and pool. Out of the 5 of us, I am the only natural and one of my friends is transitioning. My friends commented saying, out of everyone who went to the beach, I was the only one who looked fine cuz my hair was still perfect after much swimming in both the sea water and the pool. All i did was put some conditioner in my hair and used my headband to pull it back into a pouf and voila! Perfect, easy beach hair! (i did the twists in the front in the car quickly on our way to the beach, as you can see, there was no parting involved.)

Later at home while doing everyone's hair after washing, I did them the favor of assessing their hair, telling them whether or not it was healthy, had split ends and so on and so forth. Of course, everyone seeing how easy and fast it was for me to do my hair as a natural had questions, and even remarks as to thinking of going natural themselves. 

We later spoke of another mutual friend who was natural and one of my girlfriends was basically asking me to do her hair for her. She thought our natural friend needed help with her hair in terms of styling and a trim. She mentioned the fact that her friend wears the same hairstyle like everyday. She also had many questions for me, mostly with styling natural hair and what the style options are. 

I was surprised to hear that they thought their friend needed to switch up her natural hairstyle, when most girls I know with a relaxer wear their hair the same exact way everyday too, unwrap and go. Because it's natural, it seems they expect more from our hair. I see that a lot of people don't want to go natural because they think they'd need to wear an afro everyday, or the common comment I always get, "My hair just wouldn't look good natural, it's not curly like yours," or "my hair is too nappy for that!"

Its unfortunate that so many people are stuck in this mind set of thinking negatively about their own hair or natural hair in general. The whole weekend they made the joke of referring to me as the african princess, especially after much tanning. I don't mind being called that, I'll take it as a compliment because I did just look like a beautiful black woman, if i must say so myself. If natural hair automatically means "African" then i guess i'll be that. 

So... Relaxed vs. Natural 

You decide.