Online Petition Asks Beyonce and Jay Z to Comb Daughter Blue Ivy's Hair

Jasmine Toliver, from Brooklyn NY, has started an online petition to have Blue Ivy's hair combed by her famous parents, Beyonce and Jay Z. I'm wondering, 'Does this woman have a job at all? Or maybe she's a hairdresser and is stylishly seeking attention t get the Carters to her shop? The petition on change.org reads;

As a woman who understands the importance of hair care. It's disturbing to watch a child suffering from the lack of hair moisture. The parents of Blue Ivy. Sean Carter A.K.A Jay-Z and Beyoncé has failed at numerous attempts of doing Blue Ivy Hair. This matter has escalated to the child developing matted dreads and lint balls. Please let's get the word out to properly care for Blue Ivy hair.

Over 750 signatures have been given to support the petition, some of whom have left comments on the page.

"Cruelty to children has to stop."
"Because no child who's mom spends thousands on her hair (monthly) should live life looking like a sheep...."
"because no child with billions of dollars should look like a shlep"

Jada Pinkett Smith and Lisa Price Speak Out For Carol's Daughter

Jada Pinkett Smith today shared a couple of pictures of her natural hair on her Facebook page in support of Carol's Daughter, a hair company for African American woman. The company has had some bad press recently starting with a bankruptcy filing, but they are in no way folding up, just restructuring. Named for the founder's mother, Carol’s Daughter is a line of beauty products designed by Lisa Price. Their range include products for hair, skin, and hands, as well as fragrances.

A Closer Look at Chimamanda's Threaded Hair to HOAYS Movie Premiere, Will You Rock This Hairstyle?

The official pictures from the Half of a Yellow Sun movie premiere in London are out [first post], and we can now see clearly the threaded hairstyle that Chimamanda Adichie wore to the event. It echoes those threaded styles of old that some of us had our primary schools make us wear sometimes.

Juliet Ibrahim In New Promo Photo Shoot With Natural Hair

Popular Ghanaian actress, Juliet Ibrahim released these recent pictures from a photo shoot she did sporting her natural hair. She looks great in the pictures with the cute medium length afro.

Viola Davis on Essence Magazine - Talks About Natural Hair and Her Identity as a Black Actress

Viola Davis is beautiful inside and out on the cover of the October edition of Essence Magazine. She debuted her teenie tiny afro on the 2012 Oscar’s red carpet [here] and in this cover, she shows how it has grown and inside the magazine, she talks about accepting her natural beauty as it affected her work as a black actress in Hollywood. Excerpts;

How Long is Enough? Woman with Longest Dreadlocks Vows Never To Cut 55ft Long Hair

One could call Asha Mandela the real life Rapunzel, her 55ft long dreadlocks are almost two-stories high, stretching from upstairs to downstairs. But this is not a Disney movie - in real life the weight of such long locks have an effect on the body. Asha Mandela's doctors have warned her that her hair, which weighs three stone could paralyse her. However, she says she will never cut it.

Box Braids - A Good Summer Protective Hairstyle

Keri Hilson

Myne called this a wife material hairstyle in this post about Toke Makinwa, Toolz and Tiwa Savage. I'll rather say braids are more of a protective hairstyle for the summer period. Nothing kills African textured hair than the heat and humidity of summer in most parts of America, which is just like typical hot Nigerian weather.

Oprah With Big Afro Talks About Hair in New O Magazine

Oprah is known to have long healthy hair, but her hair is rarely seen without being straightened. Last August for the first time, Oprah showed off her natural curls on the cover of O magazine. She has done it again this August and inside the magazine this time will be a hair extravaganza - how to grow it, blow it, awesomely 'fro it, boost the bounce, beat the frizz, handle the grey, etc.

Meet The Woman With The Largest Afro In The World

As endorsed by the Guiness World Book of Records, Aevin Dugas has the world's biggest afro - which measures four-and-a-half foot around. When left loose around her head, Aevin struggles to see out from underneath her large afro, and so she often has to style it up properly. It took her 14 years to get to this length and fullness and Aevin says she loves the bouncy curls.

Red Palm Oil As A Moisturizer For Dry Afro Hair

Red Palm Oil is also great for dry hair. Especially natural afro-textured hair. It moisturizes dry hair giving it shine, bounce, softness and manageability w/o being heavy or weighing the hair down. The hair's ends retains softness and bounce.

An Easy Way To Soften Naturally Kinky Hair

By Chioma Iwunze-Ibiam

I wish I’d learned about the wonders of apple cider vinegar much earlier. All those years of groaning about hard it is to manage natural kinky hair would have been different. Last week, after I’d watched a How To Grow Beautiful, Softer and Shinier Hair video on Youtube, I decided to do something different.

First, I went to a department store. I bought 50cl of honey, 50cl of Aqua Rapha yogurt  and a bottle of Safari apple cider vinegar (and the ACV was so cheap. It cost less then N200 naira).  And I made my own conditioner.

First, I put a glop of yogurt in a cup. Then, I added a few spoons of honey, two tea spoons of apple cider vinegar, one table spoonful of mayonnaise (because it contains eggs and vegetable oils) and two spoonfuls of my Henna deep conditioner. I whisked these into a thick paste and proceeded to shampoo my hair. Again, I had put a few drops of the apple cider vinegar into my bucket of water.

Then, I parted my very think full head of hair and proceeded to wash and rinse. I wrapped a towel round my wet hair, just long enough to get excess water off my hair, before I brought in my homemade conditioner.

What Chimamanda Really Meant About African Hair

Chimamanda made some comments about hair the same day I published the post about texlaxing my hair for easier management. I decided not to join issues with her comments, which she's of course entitled to, but to focus on my own hair and what works for me. Some other bloggers not only reported on the comments, they embellished it with their own biases and raised a firestorm on FB and Twitter against Chimamanda. To the extent that she had to respond in an article titled ‘Of course I never said African women with Brazilian hair have low self-esteem. That’s absurd’. Read more...

Please read my interview with the Observer to know what I did say. I love my hair, its kinky and dense and coily. I love playing with it, trying hair butters and oils, wearing corn rows and afros. But sometimes I get tired of it and want a break. So I add extensions. I like extensions, but I always look for extensions that look like my hair. For me, the best compliment for extensions is the question: is it your hair?

Many of us say our natural hair is too hard, too difficult. But that’s because we weren’t taught how to care for our hair.  (I have discovered the wonders of coconut, castor, shea, even honey for softening hair. Trick is add it when your hair is wet! You get wonderful softness!)

Relaxers are not about softness. They are really about texture. Otherwise there are ways to soften hair without permanently changing the texture of hair.

Of course African women don’t want to be white, but we live in a world where the mainstream idea of beauty is straight hair. Magazines, films, popular culture all show straight hair as ideal. My cousin wears a wig to the gym because she says her natural hair underneath is too ‘ugly.’

The Hair Wars - Team Natural or Team Relaxed

So I made a huge decision about my hair recently. I've never been a natural hair nazi, but I did have an aha moment about natural hair that made me keep mine for so long. I don't know if I've said it before but when I first cut my hair, it was because of a hair accident, and the plan was to switch back to relaxed as it grew. After about 6 months, I texturized it as a first step. It still had curls but not as tight as usual.

While in that state, we went to see my brother in law and his family. His two years old daughter who had natural hair was so excited to see my hair, and followed me around everywhere, and each time I carried her, her hands went to my hair, touching it and then hers, or just rubbing it in a soothing way.

It was such an eye-opener for me on how having an adult woman with natural hair around them would definitely affect a young girl, and how they viewed themselves, and their hair. That was also the time around when we had just started trying to concieve and I was like, if I'm going to have a daughter who will come into this world with tight curls on her head, then mine had to be the same way. When we got back from the trip, I gradually trimmed my hair till the texturized part was gone.

Natural Hair in Dreadlocks Becomes Target For Thieves

Dreads are one option I've been considering for my natural hair, so this news gave me the shivers. In economics, it is said demand must match supply, otherwise a black market flourishes. When it comes to using natural African hair as extensions, this is coming true in a very nasty way. In south Africa, men who seem to have longer dreadlocks are being attacked on the streets, and their hair cut with a knife, a broken bottle, or whatever.

Jack Maseko was a victim recently, three men attacked him and took his mobile phone and the dreadlocks he had been growing for three years. Mutsa Madonko had been growing his for 10 years before his hair was shaved off outside a Johannesburg night club also. According to the BBC;

Shoulder-length dreadlocks are sold for between 200 rand ($23; £15) and 700 rand, while longer ones cost as much as 2,000 rand.

So what happens to the stolen hair?

Finding Styles for Mid-Length Natural Hair

Before I did the big chop to my hair, there was no transition, or any epiphany or decision to go natural. I consider myself lucky with regards to my hair, which I think I get from my mum, who has long and abundant healthy hair even now in her sixties. My hair is usually full and dark, the edges don't fall off easily, and it can grow.

As some of you have experienced yourselves, or may have guessed, it has not been easy for me to maintain my hair, and have it growing and healthy at an optimal level. And this is beyond that the hair is relaxed or in it's natural curly state. As a Nigerian who grew up in Nigeria, I am used to handing my hair over to salon stylists, and barely adding enough daily hair cream to get by. I'm now learning how to do it myself.

Let me not lie though, I still go to the salon regularly, maybe like once every couple of months for deep conditioning, a proper comb out, and sometimes to get the hair flat-ironed.

Being Intentional about Maintaining my Hair

As a happy go lucky student in university with more time on my hands and little spare change for salons, I minimized my relaxer touch-ups. I instead invested in some good hair products and dedicated some good hours giving my hair love. My hair thanked me for it, and got almost to my bra strap, and for long after that, I was one of those people who get their egos stroked at the salon by new stylists and when other people gush over the blackness and fullness of my hair.

But I lost that good habit when I got into the adult world, there was less time and more money, and what I thought were good salons. It wasn't long before I found my way back to monthly relaxer schedules and I spent less and less time giving my hair its needed nutrition. Coupled with my share of hair accidents over the years, mostly caused by product misuse - relaxers being the worst culprit- my hair got stuck at shoulder length.

My First Homemade Two-Strand Twists

One way I have learnt to help my hair grow, apart from using hair grow products, is to put it in protective styles. I am one of those people who has a funny habit of picking at my hair, and it is worse when in an afro. My fingers seek out the tangles, multiple and single strand knots, and before I know it, break and pull off the hair. No one has to tell me this doesn't help so I usually put my hair in corn-rows.

But that was getting too repetitive, and my hair has now also become so long and full that breaiding it has become a arm-breaking chore. I had to find another way, and I did. Several blogs mentioned two strand twists and after watching my stylist do it a few times, and seeing some tutorial videos on Youtube, I decided to give it a try.

Two strand twists are surprisingly easy to pull off. After adding cream to two sections of hair, you twist them around each other till you get to the tips. If your hair is as curly as mine, the ends will hug each other and ensure the strands don't spring apart. The pictures are of my homemade twists after some days and I rocked them for a couple more weeks.

Fast Grow Hair Growth Oil - Product Review

Since my big chop, my hair has been growing, but like I mentioned in my hair journey so far, not as fast as I expected it to. And definitely not as fast as I want it to. Some say healthy hair should grow about half an inch every month, if that is the case, then I'm right and though my hair has made good progress, it still has a ways to go.

Around the time I started researching better hair products than the one I had been using was when I was contacted by Sunset Hair to try out some of their Exotic Allure products.

From their website before I accepted to try the products, I found that the Exotic Allure Hair Growth products were specifically formulated to help promote fast, healthy hair growth by reducing hair breakage and shedding. It can be used for both relaxed or natural hair, and can be out on hair when wet and also while dry. For those with dry, flaky, itchy or inflamed Scalp, the oil supposedly helps too. I agreed to do the review and soon received the Fast Hair Grow Oil and Black Hair Vitamin.

My Unrelaxed Hair Journey So Far

From the early days of the Big Chop when I wrote this first post about my haircut back in April of last year.

I had a hair accident in March after I removed some weaves, and this led to the worst hair tangling known to man. The only solution? Cut it all off. Well, I'm comforted knowing my hair grows quickly. With time I'll share more with you guys about the hair journey.