
Gorgeous artwork from www.ilovemyhair.com
For me, the blustery, Chicago-cold new year of 2010 rang in with my head feeling a whole lot colder than I’ve EVER been used to.

On December 31, 2009, I stripped my hair of all the weaves and extensions and wigs and relaxers and products that I have used for pretty much my entire life. I took out all my tracks, washed and conditioned my own hair, twisted it to dry, and fluffed it out for the New Year’s Eve festivities.
“FREE AT LAST, FREE AT LAST! Thank God Almighty, I’m free at last…”
Surely Martin Luther King, Jr. meant the above statement in a different manner, but it still applies, and it’s how I felt. And while getting rid of the extra hair on my head may not seem like a big deal to some people, it REALLY was to me.
As a young child, my mother did my hair in the usual twists and puffs and braids and plaits and beads, typical of many

Types of hot combs, also known as intruments of torture.
young black girls. As I grew older, my mother would press my hair to make it straight, also known as “hot combing.” Hot combs can be electric (plugged into an outlet like your curling iron), or put on the stovetop for maximum heat (because densely coiled African hair takes a LOT of heat to straighten). It was always painful and a LONG process, because in order to reach the desired straightness, you’d have to grasp each and every single tiny little baby hair curl. And my hair has always been thick, so despite my mom’s gentle touch, my hair had to be pulled in order for the blazing hot comb to “tame” the masses of natural tresses.
There were also the instances where I, trying to hot comb my hair myself, burnt off INCHES of hair, sometimes leaving nothing but a half-inch crisp of brown fried bangs where there were, seconds ago, longer locks. That SUCKED. And EVERY black girl has done it at least once, I promise.
Painful the hot comb was, but my younger sister and I always LOVED the results: smooth, straight, shiny hair that sometimes blew in the wind (even though a lot of the time, it didn’t).
I suppose becoming accustomed to the pain of the hot comb in order to achieve white-girl-straight hair became embedded in my psyche, because from that era on, dealing with my hair was nothing but a pain. And I embraced it.
But why?
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