Cloudy With A Chance of Kinky

Rhonda Lee is a tv meteorologist working in Austin, TX. She shares her natural hair story with NewNaturalista.

I remember the “nappy headed hoes” statement of 2007.

I remember thinking to myself that perhaps white people didn’t understand it.  They didn’t.  There wasn’t a frame of reference from which they could pull. But they now understand that there is an insult in there somewhere.

I still think that.

I firmly believe there is still a disconnect between the insult and the meaning. I also believe that we as African-American women don’t help the situation. We don’t take the time to explain.  We don’t help “them” understand. I’m guilty.  I personally don’t want to help. I like the mystery. It keeps them honest and it gives me power over management and decision makers.  I am calling the shots because I am among the nappy headed.

The few. The proud. The unrelaxed.

I’ve had an intervention from 2 male African-American co-workers. I’ve most recently been approached—if you will–  by the marketing department at my current television station.  In the past, my hair has been described as “too aggressive for Sacramento,” dramatic, non-relatable, harsh and most recently by my current boss “severe.”

“Don’t you agree?” he asked.

“To white people…” I replied.

I had no idea when I cut my shoulder-length tresses about 10 years ago that my hair could quite possibly incite a riot if given the opportunity.

I’m feeling a little “Helen of Troy-ish” right now. Or I would have if it weren’t a top 3 reasons for why I wasn’t being considered for jobs. Denied! My agent called me last year and asked if I would consider perhaps growing my hair out for at least a little while so that he could tell potential employers that I was doing it and hopefully they would consider giving me another look. I agreed but told him that the moment I got the job and was past the 3 month period the hair was coming off.

I hung up the phone and cried.

White women aren’t asked to do this.  Either they are good or they aren’t. Their employment isn’t solely contingent on if they can rock a similar do to that of Jennifer Aniston.  Why am I?

They love me. Love everything about me.  Are thinking of being me for Halloween, but can’t hire me because I am black.  Oh wait! It’s not that you are black per se, it’s that your hair is too ethnic. But have you considered growing it out?

Oh, it is grown out? It doesn’t look like your co-anchor’s.  How about a short cut like hers? Oh yours is longer than hers? (Insert look of confusion here). Ohhh, ok. This is a summarized version of a recent exchange that I endured. I had to explain that my hair grows up, not down. That my hair isn’t going to lay down with gravity, but defy it. And I defy the suggestion that I straighten my hair if I want to make it in this industry.

I still subscribe to the American notion that I am going to be successful because I am smart, experienced and have that “it” factor needed to be on TV. Maybe it’s through my hair I gain my strength like Sampson, but in a kinky- curly way that makes people notice me. My hair is my trademark. I’m known as that weatherlady with the short hair. No one is unsure of the fact that it is indeed me.  They KNOW it!

Miss Relaxed 1998

I did my big chop originally because I was tired of the breakage and stress from relaxers.  But at first it was short and still relaxed and barely long enough to still bump a curl in there every once in a while.  But it rapidly, yet clandestinely got shorter and shorter until I was no longer needing a beautician but a barber.  It snuck up on me. As did the compliments when I’d visit foreign countries or from people on the street in the USA;  I literally stopped traffic.  Who does that?  Me.

A standard I would encourage any woman to adopt comes from one of my favorite books, “Memoirs of a Geisha.” A seasoned Geisha tells her apprentice, “You cannot call yourself a true geisha until you can stop a man in his tracks with a single look.” I did.  Just minutes after I got the shortest haircuts of my life. I was on Georgia Avenue in Washington, DC. I remember that as the point in my life when I realized that I was FREE and I was considered stop-and-stare beautiful for the first time.  There is no feeling like it!  From then on I carried myself differently.  Carefree. Not worried about the rain—after all I am in weather.

India.Arie said “I am not my hair”, but I am! I’m every bit my hair. I’m full of life, I’m not made to lay down.  I am just what God gave me to work with, and I am working it!