When the relaxer doesn’t take…
I know we talk alot on this blog about women who make the choice to be natural. But what about those who don’t have a choice?
In her interview on BGLH today Tanisha talks about how her relaxers simply didn’t take, and her hair reverted back to natural after a week.
My experience was similar. My hair has actually never been relaxed. A texturizer I tried in my final year of high school resulted in severely broken off hair. So my only options going forward were braid extensions and flat-ironing.
But the flat ironing slowly ate away at my hair. The day I did my big chop (which was impromptu/unplanned) I woke up to a small fistful of broken off strands on my pillow. That — coupled with the trauma in my personal life at the time — was enough to drive me to cut all my hair off.
What about you. Did you have a CHOICE to be natural? Or did your hair simply refuse to be any other way…
I do think that it was a choice for me to relax my hair just as much as it was a choice to stop. When I was relaxed, my hair was breaking and I couldn’t deal with the two textures. I did however think my hair looked good (at least for a week after getting relaxed). My hair was never quite relaxed either. It was never perfectly straight. It always kept some kink in there no matter how long or strong the relaxer.
So am I natural by default? Well yes since this is how my hair grows out naturally by default. Did I make a choice to keep my hair this way? Yes absolutely because I could have kept going through the cycle but I chose to break the pattern.
I chose to stop relaxing, my hair always took but I think it took TOO much, was just limp and straight. I think that’s why even when I was relaxed, I always had some kind of twists or crimps or roller set, SOMETHING to give it some oomph. Now I can have oomph because that’s what comes out of my head
http://socialitedreams.wordpress.com
Education is the key. Wat these CHEMICALS do to our hair is ridiculous. Would you but draino on ur face, would you but crude oil on ur skin? So why would you put something just as caustic on ur hair. Hair is just as much a part of ur body as everything else. Treating it with love and care should be the priority. LEARN WHATS IN A RELAXER and then tell me about it “not taking” oh its taking all right. Taking away the moisture, the vitality and the health of ur hair. However black hair is so beautiful and resiliant it doesnt just back down without a fight. Embrace ur real texture, embrace the beauty of what God gave you. Take care of it and you wont have to worry about it.
Relaxers never really took on my hair.. But it was still kind of thin. I have a weird texture I suppose because after every relaxer my hair still had a bit of wave too it once it dried. Blow drying only made it worse. After every relaxer I’d have to get out the CHI & work up a sweat just to get that silky straight hair. Still I wasn’t forced to become natural. I had a choice I believe. The relaxer just loosened up my curls into wavy hair, thats all. The front section of my hair still reminds me of my relaxed tresses.
My hair definitely didn’t take to the relaxers, but for whatever reason, I KEPT on relaxing. It would smooth my curls out, but the relaxer (and it wasn’t a texturizer, it was real stuff) never straightened my hair out the way it did for my friends. The beautician would rinse out the relaxer and wash it and condition it and when my head came out of the sink, other ladies in the salon would be like…’Um, didn’t you just relax her hair?’ It still took 2-3 hours to straighten everyweek because I have to roller set and then flat iron to get it straight like at the salon. It annoyed me until I realized this was God telling me to chill out and love my curly hair. I had a choice: i could still go and get my hair relaxed and deal with smooth curls and damaged ends OR I could just be natural, either way I was dealing with curly hair.
I am fortunate that I had a CHOICE to be natural. It was simple~I thought back when I didn’t have a relaxer and how long my hair (with a relaxer the longest my hair got was a little past shoulder length/then breakage) and when I did have a relaxer my favorite choice of styles were rods, big curls, twist out etc…I love curly big hair.
So, if I want my hair to be long and curly the simple choice is to become natural. Even, if my hair does not grow to the lengths prior to my relaxer I am so loving these curls, kinks, n coils 
My relaxer “took”…took my hair and ate it up.
I wonder if those whose hair curled up after receiving a relaxer have larger hair strands (larger in diameter). My strands are fine and supa-curly so the relaxer knocked out every bend. To those who had curls after the relaxer…are your strands larger than other curlies you see?
Sort of. My mom would never relax my hair. Her stories about how chemicals fry hair scared me, so I never did it.
i can totally relate to this, but not until now has anyone else mentioned it. my hair has never been straight with a relaxer, not even loosely wavy, my hair always remand exactly the way it was before. i was also a sporadic relaxer, maybe once a year i would forget and then be like “oh maybe i should relax my hair now!!” and i always applied it to ALL of my hair, didn’t know i wasn’t suppose to, it was all always so curly, i couldn’t tell new growth from perm. i even alternated from curly to straight often, i have pic of my hair fully permed(no new growth)and i am rocking, full curly pig tails, puffs, and wash and gos. one day i decide to stop perming my hair because it served absolutely no purpose, besides damaging my hair, but even that was minimal. i was very familiar with my natural texture, had been that way since childhood. i have now been transitioning for a year and nearly eight months. there are no terrible two’s, more like slightly disagreeable, and only moderate breakage if i neglect the moisture for a long period of time. i might “big” chop in august, or i might continue until i am happy with length of the “new growth”,the only difference between the two is the shrinkage. so no i never had a choice, my hair refused to be any thing other than extremely curly!!
b. my hair is very, very fine. wispy, silky, poofy and spongy. a texture on would think would bow down in the face of a relaxer, but my hair won every time !!
Good question. I’ve noticed a similar trend among women who get frustrated with their natural hair and turn to the process of dreading. I didn’t have any problems with relaxers so it was definitely a choice. I’d have healthy hair either way (thank Goodness!).
My hair refuses to be any other way. The hairdressers were baffled when they tried to relax it because my hair refused to uncurl properly. They would redo the same section each time I went in (yes, horrific) and would not be satisfied with the results. My hair was less curly, but not really straight. Even when they flat-ironed it, I could hold up a phony pony that was straight and see how my hair wasn’t. I am back to natural now, and I am learning to work with these curls.
My relaxer never took either.I would have to relax and flat iron tremendously to get it straight. I would probably get at most three relaxers a year.All it really did was loosen the curl……but my hair broke off really bad.
Something crazy: my hair looks better straightened via flat iron now than it did when I was relaxed. No two-textured bogusness with new growth and it maintains the thickness that post-touch-up I would wait about a week or so for. Definite unexpected bright side!
@lexibugg, i totally agree with you.
seriously leila, i didn’t really have a choice i just had to. i can remember when i used to relax, the stylists always said how “stong” and “hard” and “coarse” my hair was. my hair is like lexibugg described hers. my friends even advised me to stay for 2hours but my scalp couldn’t tolerate a relaxer for more than 30minutes. some people even told me to relax my hair every week which i obviously said no. this is my third time of going natural and this time my friends can’t tell me nothing because as far as my hair is concerned, a relaxer acts a texturizer and a texturizer acts like petroleum jelly-only to irritate my scalp. so yes, i didn’t really have a choice.
even though my hair “took” to the relaxers, i still feel like i didn’t really have a choice when it came to being natural. and what i mean by that is even though my hair would be long and straight and pretty by (white) society’s standards, i was still slowly killing it every time i put those harmful chemicals in my hair. so really there was no choice
Funny, i relaxed my hair all the time but i always still had some of the poof and alot of the curl. it had to be flat-ironed to be completely straight to be honest. I made my hair alot thinner but it’s natural nature was still there.
@B – Like lexibugg my hair is quite fine but it has been described by others as coarse/hard. I think it earned the name coarse/hard because it wouldn’t relax. My sister’s hair was fine too but her hair did get relaxed and she often did it bone straight too. In comparison, my hair is thicker than my sister’s but it is definitely still in the fine category.
For me, Ima say that it just happened. I didn’t choose to go natural, my parents just never got my hair done when they was suppose to. My mother did know how to do my hair, in which it resulted in me not care for or about my hair. Am I natural? Probably not, I didn’t get a big chop(nor will i) and i still put alot of heat on my hair. But considering the journey my hair has gone through, I love it and I know its alot of people who wish thy had my thickness and length. If only i knew what to do with it though! lol!
My thin hair always looked thinner with a relaxer. I decided to go natural when I went to a salon for touch up and the stylist was very concerned about my treatment. The root was straight, the ends were straight but in between, there were kinks. I think she was also afraid at how much of my hair was falling out… somehow I was able to hold onto my hair long enough to grow the perm out but that was too scary for me. It was the first time the perm didn’t take, the last time I resorted to a perm.
I kinda sorta didn’t have a choice. I was getting ready for my freshman year of college and I decided to have my aunt (who has been the only person to touch my hair since birth practically) do two big fish tail braids for my trip… a few days after I arrived on campus and made my way around town I found myself in a tight spot. My braids were fuzzy and needed to be taken out. Only problem was, I had no idea what to do with it once they were out. I could either go to the nearby salon and get charged an arm and a leg after never having to pay for my hair to get done before, or go natural and take care of my hair myself and keep the little bit of chump change I had to spend on stuff I needed… needless to say, four years later I still feel I made the right choice. Me and my pockets are a lot happier! lol
I got my first relaxer when I went to visit my dad, his wife is eat indian and she has beautiful long silky shiny hair like many east indian women. She got me a relaxer kit. My hair was poofy but very curly and I had a giant bun all the time. After I relaxed it myself (took two boxes) my hair was straight but had little waves to it. It was past my chest. I was about 13. Ever since than I’ve done a relaxer about once or twice a year and I regret everyone which is why I have now stopped. I have super strong thick hair strands so my hair was never actually perfectly straight because it was so curly and thick. I love my hair at this stage, the new growth which is now about an inch is getting me so excited
I was natural until I got to college. Before then, I had grown locks for 7 years and cut them when I decided I needed a change. Before the locks, my mother always kept my hair braided as a child so it was never anything for me to think about. I hadn’t realized that caring for my locks was vastly different from caring for loose hair, and the lack of a plan or real knowledge about my hair caused me to feel inadequate and that is when I decided to relax it. The relaxer didn’t straighten my hair. No matter what I did or how carefully I followed the instructions it would come out looking like my hair had a type 3 curl pattern. My solution was to start flat-ironing it. The excessive heat, the lack of money and resources to get my hair done and maintained professionally, the general ignorance about how to take care of my hair(I washed my hair one day and went kind of crazy rubbing the shampoo into my hair and came out with a tangled mess beyond repair that could only be cut. I have since sworn off shampoo completely and am very careful with my hair) and the fact that straight hair was honestly not a good look for me was what led me to go back to natural. So, in a lot of ways I guess I didn’t have a choice. Its o.k. though because there isn’t a single person who can tell me that my natural hair isn’t cute, lol.
My hair never took well to relaxers no matter how well I took care of it. My hair would never grow and always break off. I would go natural or get braids and my hair would grow healthy and strong. I even tried cutting it off and then getting a relaxer, thinking I should just start frest but that didn’t work either. I would still say it is a choice to be natural though, with other options to choose from like weaves and braids I chose natural.