Quick and Easy After Pool/Beach Up-do

One thing I always remembered about the summer, was always needing to have some way to contain my hair during water activities. For the most part, as a child, I lived in box braids and single strand twists, so going in the water meant nothing but shrunken hair... which at that point meant nothing because my hair was always shrunken anyway. lol Since I was never the one in charge of my hair and my mother worked a lot, styles like braids and twists were essential to my mother, being able to easily rinse them and not have to worry about combing hair if she didn't have the time.
This time around while out in LA, I figured going in the pool with loose hair couldn't be that bad, now that I'm old enough to do my own  hair (lol) and my hair is now long enough to go into a ponytail... that would be my saving grace, and it was! I grabbed whatever conditioner I could find, and smoothed it onto my hair after I was finished with my pool shenanigans. On my way to tan, I put the back of my hair up into a little high bun and left what would be the bang area out. It shrunk up quite a bit... but if you don't mind the skrunken look and want to pull off a little more than a curly fro or ponytail after the pool or beach, this can be a cute and quick little updo look for you. Adding some conditoner is a great way to keep your hair from totally drying out from pool and/or ocean water and the sun, and get a little deep conditioning time in. You can even try a conditoner with SPF if you know you'll be out in the sun for a while, or adding a little oil to your conditioner if you have really dry hair.

 I hope this saves someone's beach/pool hair!

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.