How old were you when your mother/auntie/grandma/cousin first relaxed your hair, and what are your memories of it?
***Update***
Bajan Princess just added an interesting follow up question: “Do/did any of you discuss the feelings that you have/had (I see some of you said you were/are angry) with your mothers? Do they feel any remorse or regret for perming your hair?”
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i was 14 when I got my first relaxer… Honestly, I loved it… It was thick and long and straight… even though I’m “natural” now… It took me 10 years to realize I could get my hair just as straight w/o a relaxer if that was the look I was going for… I never left perms in very long. If even started to feel a tingle… I washed that ish out! I always did my edges and middle first. I got touch ups like twice a year. The problem was the heat damage and the perm combination that broke my hair off. So I stopped putting heat in my hair around the same time I stopped getting a perm… I’m pretty sure, if I kept going the way I was going… I’d be bald by now.. I’m 34. Oddly enough, I got a perm to fit in… not because I wanted one. I could have worn my afro but being picked on constantly was not my idea of a happy high school experience.
i begged for a relaxer growing up and my mom would never let me get one. when she passed away, my aunt allowed me to finally have my wish, at the age of 12. it lasted for all of a few months before it damaged my MBL hair- took all the quality and length away. i’ve been natural again now for the past decade. no relaxer will come near the heads of any of my children. i only have a little boy now, so maybe it won’t be an issue for him
I was eight when I got my first relaxer. Up until that point my mother took me to the salon to get presses for special occasions only. I did NOT want the relaxer. I remember my older sister telling me they hurt, and I was not open to pain (as if most kids are, lol). My hair got really thin but I kept getting relaxers regularly until I turned 20 and I got my last relaxer then.
My mom and I have talked about the relaxer. She does have great remorse. But I told her not to worry about it. Her decision was societal and not her fault. She was taking the advice of our hair stylist. Why wouldn’t she believe an cosmetologist? I don’t blame her and I’m not angry with her either. Now my mother, sister and I are all natural. We love it! We are free.
I got a relaxer to ease my transition into a private middle school. Until I was 11, my hair was always in 7-10 of those big puffy two strand twists that little girls wear. Hot combs weren’t going to cut it and my mom was getting a lot of pressure from family members. I remember the discomfort, the smell, and the burn but I felt like a right of passage at the time. I’m glad I did it because I’m a grown women now who’s been there, done that and no one can make me question whether I want to go back. By the time I was 15, I stop relaxing and got my hair heat straightened. At 18, I was fully natural rocking a fro to class.
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OH YES!!! I was 8 years old. I had hair down to my bottom. It was too thick however to fit into those stupid “i love genie” cones. it was 1988. My mother was dead set against it. She wanted me to wait until I was 16 but I begged her. My father side were more into weaves. She obliged and to this day I wish I never relaxed my hair EVER. I wish I would have waited until 16 b/c I’m quite sure I would have enjoyed my natural hair and it would probably be down to my knees once blown out. When I have a daughter I will never apply relaxer to her hair. If she wants to when she is a teenager she can. I just hope by then our society will be more accepting of natural styles and there will be less of the “stink eye”.
I’m very late with this response but I was 5 or 6 when I got my first relaxer.My grandmother was doing it at first then she found a horrible stylist. By 4th grade I had to go to the doctor and get medication because my scalp was severely burned. My grandmother gave me 2 years off and by 6th grade I was getting them again from a different stylist, my hair grew with her to APL but I always felt very stigmatized going to that salon like I was an outsider so I stopped going to her at the age of 18. From 18-24 I was going to several different people getting relaxers etc and my hair never grew past shoulder length, I stopped relaxing my hair because I actually started paying attention to what I was putting in it. My grandmother is from the Dominican Republic (my mother passed away) and there curly hair is VERY frowned upon, mulatto/black Dominicans are raised into self-hatred; I’m not bashing Dominicans but sadly it’s reality. Not ALL Dominicans are the same but it’s common, when I told her I was going natural she was very accepting but telling her how it made me feel throughout my childhood is futile, it’s like I’m speaking Chinese; she doesn’t understand the negative aspects of the experiences I had so I just let it be.
I was 10 years old, it was 1998. My family had just moved from Greenville to Charlotte. My mother’s family is full of men that do hair. But when we moved to Charlotte we left all of them behind. I’m my mother’s only daughter, she barely put effort into her own hair so doing my was a bit of a stretch. Both of my brothers have 3b/3c hair, I’ll say I’m a mix of 3c and 4a. My curls are very defined but they’re not very large in diameter I knew my hair wasn’t that terrible, she was just lazy. My Uncles never complained about doing my hair they would just wash it and blow dry it strait, it would last for about 2 weeks during the school year. They didn’t bother during the Summer because I’m a tom boy i would just sweat it out anyway. I started transitioning after my pregnancy. Reason 1 because the second half of my pregnancy I didn’t get a relaxer at all, i just flat ironed my roots. Reason 2 I had a daughter, I didn’t want her to feel who she was is wrong. I wanted her to feel beautiful no matter what her hair looked like. 2 weeks after having my daughter (against my grandmother’s wishes) i got a relaxer. I felt so wrong. I’ve been natural every since. I made my BC July 3rd and i LOVE, LOVE, LOVE my hair. I’m trying to figure out what works for it, but so far it’s going really good.
I agree, my daughter started my knowledge in regards to hair care. She has 3a/3b curls and I had NO IDEA how to manage curly hair, her hair is gorgeous but my grandmother kept talking about blowing her hair out, etc and how her hair looked ‘unkempt’ curly (mind you like I said she has 3A/3B curls). So I went online and researched how to maintain curly hair, two years later she said ‘mommy what’s that?” when I was @ the salon with her getting my hair done. That’s when it started to hit me, I didn’t want my daughter seeing me constantly relaxing my hair because I was scared of its natural texture. I thought of the type of message I would be sending her, especially since there aren’t many curlies in the main stream media.
I remember my first relaxer being a Kiddy Kit relaxer. I was in my teens. I don’t remember much else about my first relaxer.
Before that, I’d worn my hair either pressed and curled or braided. Even after my first relaxer, my mother continued to braid my hair (with extensions) periodically.
I was 21 when i got my first relaxer. I had just had my son and my hair was then too thick for me to handle and was growing out of control. so my older sis suggested it and i thought, “why not i haven’t done that before”. I had hennahed and hot combed and braided and beaded but never a perm. After it was done i loved it and my hair grew more for about a year or so. Then suddenly it started to fall out and it seemed like nothing i did would reverse this. So I cut it off and went back to what i knew best and loved (my natural hair). I just turned 28 on the 17th and my hair is back down my back and feeling free as ever. 🙂
I was 12 or 13 years old and begged my mom for a relaxer because all my cousins had relaxers and I had a huge tumble weed of dry frizzy hair. I remember the feeling of long hair down to the middle of my back. I felt like a princess. By high school my hair had broken off multiple times, in college I learned to care for my hair myself and retained length. After graduation a lot of my friends began going natural and last August I decided to try transitioning. One year later I’m here and loving every minute of it.
I got my first relaxer when I was 5 years old. I remember it was PCJ and I was really excited because I thought my hair would instantly be long and pretty like the girl standing next to her mother on the box (remember that?). It didn’t exactly turn out that way. I was so young, so I don’t remember if there was damage, but I look back at my childhood pictures and my hair looked so…limp! It was what my Latina friends (lovingly) refer to as “dead hair.” Now I am really considering growing out my natural hair, but I have so many conflicting feelings. I am sad that I don’t even remember my natural hair texture. I am hurt that my mother didn’t allow me to experience my natural hair. I know that she was doing what she thought was best, but I am an elementary school teacher and I see the daily result of girls who don’t think their hair is acceptable. I am worried about what people will think of me with natural hair (my stylist is very old school and anti-natural, plus she will miss the weekly $18 + tip she gets from me) and what I will think of myself. Luckily my mom and aunt now wear natural hair and are very supportive and non-judgmental. I’m also happy that there are sites like this to give me ideas and motivation.
I was 13. My Mom had held out after years of begging. I am not anti-relaxer so I don’t regret my Mom’s decision. She took great care of my hair and taught me how to. My hair thrived with the relaxer, just as it does naturally. So, I didn’t feel guilty about relaxing my own daughter’s hair. She is 11 and has been begging for years. I make sure her hair is conditioned, moisturized and treated with as little heat as possible (I do wash & sets on her). I use the same great products on her relaxed hair as I use on my natural hair. I have shown her through my own hair choices that she will be beautiful whether her hair is long or short, relaxed or natural. She knows that she has to love who she is no matter what and take good care of what God gave her! Not all relaxer memories are bad. 🙂
I was 10 years old and I was SOOO excited! I would finally have straight pretty hair like all the grown-ups in my family! No more getting my hair pressed, with the threat of the belt sitting right beside me, so my mom could whoop me if I dared cry or jump LOL. Fast forward 22 years later, and I am sickened by my limp, lifeless, hair. I’m tired of being scared to go out in the rain, work out and get sweaty, or go swimming. I’m tired of scalp burns and bald spots. I’m tired of that suitcase of hair products I have to carry with me if I I’m away from home for even one night. I’m tired of never letting ANYONE touch my hair!
I don’t blame my mom for it at all. I have so many memories of her spending long hours lovingly caring for my natural hair before it was permed. She deep conditioned, detangled carefully and patiently, and braided my hair into styles that kept for weeks at a time. At night she would moisturize my scapl and make certain that I always, always wore a cap to bed.
Unfortunately perms were the celebrated practice for women in our family; a right of passage into womanhood, so to speak. But now that my hair is natural, my family is very supportive, and also VERY curious, b/c it’s a novelty for them, really. And I just LOVE it now when people want to touch my hair!!!
I remember my first relaxer. I was 18 years old and I made the decision to have my hair relaxed because I wanted to see what it felt like. I’ve never had a negative view of my hair, I’ve never heard my mother make a negative remark or even those i was around do so either, and interestingly enough my view of my hair hasn’t been changed by the media. So it wasn’t like I didn’t like what I had– I was just curious because others around me were getting perms so I got it; and I didn’t like it – I’ve always had long hair but I didn’t like how the permed hair felt (to me it felt unnatural, like straw and lifeless, just hanging there doing nothing).I mostly missed how it felt when it’s wet. I eventually cut all of my hair off and started over with my hair. I just loved it. My hair is super thick and it feels alive under my hands. Nothing at all can be compared to that.
I was 12. My mother let me wear my hair down and natural for about a year, she must not have liked the way it looked, or figured since I was going to junior high, I should have a relaxer. There really wasn’t much conversation about it. I just know that she did the first one and then taught me how to do my own and I did it for about two decades before “seeing the light”. Yes, I regret getting my first relaxer, if I better understood why I, as an african american female, relaxed my hair and realized early on that I really was doing it in an effort to “fit in” or look more Eurocentic, I would have preferred to have been older and wiser before deciding (or having the decision made for me) to relax.
I was 5 years old and I remember being so happy because my mom said that my hair would look like the girls on the PCJ box and she promised that my head would not hurt anymore when she was combing it. I.WAS.SOLD. I remember FEELING the relaxer being rinsed out of my hair and feeling this mass of slickness just laying down my back. I looked over at my mother with bright eyes and she laughed at me. When it was all done, I had this beautiful head of long, “shiny”, straight hair and I didn’t know what to do with myself… until about the 4th grade when I was allowed to do my own ponytails and I discovered gel and hairspray! That was the end of it. I struggled with my hair until about college. It started to grow back to its’ fullness and length but then I BC’ed and that is a story to be told another time! 🙂
My mom first relaxed my hair in fourth grade when i began taking swim classes…i was sooooo excited i wanted straight “easy-to-manage” hair like my older sister. My mother has 5 daughters of whom I am the darkest skinned so throughout my life i’ve heard comments about my dark-skin and “nappy” hair in contrast to my mother’s light skin and straight hair (i have never seen my mother’s natural hair texture other than pictures). Of course relaxing and chlorine dont mix, my hair had broken off and ends had split. Throughout middle, junior, and 3yrs of highschool i continued with the relaxing. I suffered with my self-esteem, self-image, and self-identity issues. My older, 23-yo sister went natural about 6yrs ago and i loved her hair, she ROCKED an afro and i admired her. So after seeing my sister looking gorgeous with her natural mane and seeing a Tyra episode about black women who bleached their skin and another about black women with relaxed vs. natural hair I decided to stop relaxing my hair my senior year in hs, I saw it as a means to an end of self-doubt, hatred, and a path to self discovery. I wanted to show my younger sisters they didnot have to conform to European beauty standards and they are beautiful the way they are. My hair serves as a representation of my heritage(which i do not know too well having enslaved ancestors and all). I had my last perm a few days before my 18th birthday, May 14th…and i have never been happier!!! I love my natural hair textre it is so soft and not at all “nappy”. I still get negative comments from my mother about my hair when it is in it’s natural state free of two-strand twists or some other style she views as taming my “unkempt” hair but i love the freedom and versatility of my hair being natural. I have expressed to my mother my disappointment and sadness of her chemically straightening my hair and protested vehemently when she relaxed my 15 yo sister’s hair a few years ago (when i was still relaxed) and have let it be known that I will not allow her to relax my 6and9 yo sister’s hair, i have even encouraged her to go natural(but she won’t). I even asked her why she relaxed my hair to which she replied: “I got tired of combing it and i couldn’t straighten it because it would melt, it was nappy!” Now having a daughter of my own I refuse to chemically straighten her hair and being 3 weeks old, i am quick to correct anyone who comments that she had “good hair” because it is curly and silky. I wont let her be brainwashed or feel ashamed of her hair. I LOVE MY NATURAL HAIR 😀
I was 12. It was a cold November day. I had been pulled out during class [PE of all classes]by my oldest sister and taken to Nashville. I wasn’t told why or where we were going. We finally arrived at some random hairdresser to whom my sister had been referred. No one told me not to scratch my head- which had been all sweaty from PE and scratched because my scalp was dry. Anyway, 5 minutes into the application, THE BURN began. The hairdresser could barely finish applying the perm before she had to rinse it out. I was hysterically crying. She styled my hair and sent me on with a tube of PERM REPAIR. WTH? Needless to say, my hair has not been as THICK or as LONG (it used to be mid back length. I love my sister, but I still have some unresolved issues with that day. WHEW this has been theraputic!
Well, 22 years later I decided to end the cycle of dryness & breakage. I cringed when my same sister had some RANDOM stylist that someone had referred, and had her 11 year old get a relaxer. Two relaxers later and severe breakage she has decided to have her go natural again! Hopefully this time she has learned!
I was 14 and in 9th grade when I got my first relaxer. I had shoulder length hair and was amazed how my hair was blowing in the wind…felt like I was in a Gentle Treatment commercial(I am dating myself!!).
YES YES YES!! I WAS 8YRS OLD.MY SISTER AND I WERE ON SUMMER VACATION TO VISIT OUR GRANDPARENTS. OUR HAIR WAS NOT KINKY. BUT B/CAUSE IT WAS SO LONG AND THICK IT WOULD GET REALLY TANGLED AFTER WASHING. I GUESS MY G-MA DIDN’T REALLY KNOW HOW TO MANAGE OUR HAIR. NEEDLESS TO SAY, WE HAD A COUSIN WHO WORKED IN JCPENNY SALON IN CANTON, OH. G-MA TOOK US THERE ONE DAY AND THE DREADED CYCLE OF RELAXERS HAD BEGUN!! OVER THE YEARS I CAME TO DEVELOP A LOVE/HATE RELATIONSHIP WITH MY HAIR..LOL..NOW AT 28, I HAVE DECIDED TO TRANSITION BACK TO MY NATURAL HAIR AND I AM LOVING THE FREEDOM IT BRINGS! I AM 8-9 MONTHS INTO TRANSITION AND MY HAIR AND SCALP ARE NOTICEABLY HEALTHIER. ALSO, MY HAIR GROWS AT AN ALARMING RATE! IT WAS ALREADY LONG BUT NOW I THINK IT HAS TAKEN ON A LIFE OF IT’S OWN AND I’M LOVING IT!THANKS BGLH FOR ALLLLLL OF THE ENCOURAGEMENT THIS SITE OFFERS!
I don’t remember getting my first relaxer. I think I got my first one against what most people call the “safe” age at either 2 or 3. I started head-start at 3 and my hair was deffinitely relaxed by then. I remember living in Alaska though and wearing my straight leg, starch stiff pale sea foam jean pants with my blue and pink sweater on. And I remember sitting forever and enduring the painful itchiness I would feel. I remember thinking it was so terrible to have to spend so much time on hair and found it heartbreaking to know that it was only people who looked like me who had to deal with such a process. My hair reached the middle of my back. I was told that I was a gorgeous child, but I couldn’t understand why all of me wasn’t.
I’m 20yrs old now. I start transitioning last Halloween with my last relaxer, I’ve had a BC, and now I’m rockin what Mama was tryna hide; A spiral curled fro’ed out crown.
I’m Puerto Rican and unfortunately I was one of the ones whose family started relazing their hair at early ages. For me it was the age of four. I still remember all throughout my life hating having to perm my hair and just wanting to be free. So many times, I would try to let it grow out only to be met with disapproving comments. I have had a perm on my hair for 30 years. I am tired of it and am planning to bc it off. I have not permed it since November 2009 and I am looking for someone to cut it off! I want to be free, I want to be me.
Being of Puerto Rican background, relaxers are like second nature to culture sadly. Thankfully, my mother regrets giving me one to this day. She’s always told me my hair is beautiful.
My first relaxer was when I was about 6 years old. Truth be told I don’t remember it, but many more relaxers followed all the way until I was 15 years old. I remember the later relaxers in my life. I was searching for the “holy grail” hair: smooth shiny and straight. I basically wanted to be white (no offense to white people). I never was satisfied with how the salon ladies styled my hair. It never looked the way I wanted it. This caused many sobbing spells. One sad day at 15, my hair was stiff and stood up on end without me knowing. Everyone at school laughed at me. I couldn’t even go to class. That day I made a choice and did my first BC. After some growth, I got my hair locked.
After wearing my hair locked for 4-7 years, I BC again and started a TWA not knowing how to properly care for my hair. Went back to creamy crack twice. Then I finally woke up after my mother in law pulled me aside and gave some “constructive” crit about not letting my hair grow out to “Don King” proportions. I finally found sites like these and my hair looks great and I’m proud of it.
12 years old my mother and aunt who is a beautician talked me into a perm. We argued for hours then I finally gave in only because they said “Just this ONE time!!” which was a lie.
I was a child who took PRIDE in her African heritage and NATURAL hair. The perm was the beginning of myself consciousness and SELF-ESTEEM issues.I began to think my blackness wasn’t enough in American society. I tried to bleach my gums(which was painful), LOSE weight and GAIN in the same time span. 2006 I decided to go natural again I did not have my mothers support but I did not care! because I felt like a QUEEN!!! when I cut it short.
The first time my mother put a relaxer in my hair I was about 7 or 8 years old. I had hair down to the middle of my back & it was too much to handle naturally, I guess. I didn’t like the time put into relaxing it, or the pain. As I got older, I would only relax my hair twice a year, but I finally stopped using them after I had my son at the age of 28. I’m very happy with the health of my hair & how I take care of it. I only put heat on it twice a month now & get regular trims every six weeks.
I was 5 (1984) and I remember it like yesterday. Every Saturday my grandmother, who was a professional stylist back in the day, would wash my long thick hair, detangle it, sit me under the dryer, press it, pull it, and finally candy curl it. The process would start at about 8a.m. and end about 4p.m. Well this Saturday, my mom pulls out a mysterious jar of this smelly white stuff and slathers it on. I mean from roots to tip! My grandmother protested from the background, but my mother was hell bent on getting my hair to “lay down” like my sisters. It started to burn almost immediately. I was crying so hard that I started to hyperventilate, which I got in trouble for. They finally washed it out and I hated it from day one because of the tight spiked roller set. My head hurt and my hair was crunchy. I remember waking up and feeling the wetness from the chemical burns that had started to puss over. To add insult to injury, I got a gheri curl less than a year later…ARGHHHHH!!!
I got my first perm for my high school prom. Up until then it had been press and curl all the way. My mom asked if I was sure…I was definitely sure because I wanted a cute short hair cut that could only be achieved with a perm. I continued to perm for 5 years and then texturized for 2. Went back to the perm after a few years, then back to a texturizer. I finally went natural after a perm broke my hair off at the top, and a texturizer came out with me showing more scalp than curl. After the last texturizer I let my hair grow. A bad trim had me cutting my hair all over again. I have been natural for over a year and absolutely love it. My mom and sisters keep asking me when I am going to do my hair…
I got my first perm in third grade back in the early 1970s. This was because my natural hair was very long and thick and I cried whenever it was time to wash and detangle it. They didn’t have any special moisturizers or leave in conditioners to help soften the hair at that time, so doing my hair was a big chore. My mom took me to several hair dressers to get a price, but none wanted to touch my hair for less than $25.00. She found someone who agreed to do it for $18.00 but after the hairdresser was done, she asked for the $25.00. I cried and carried on the whole time because my hair was so tangled and had to be combed out before she could do the perm. I was dissappointed to have my long straight ponytail put in a big braid. What was the difference? I had always worn my hair that way. The perm changed my hair texture, but my hair didn’t break. I didn’t get a perm again until 4 years later when I was trying to be cute in junior high school. I went natural off and on for years before I gave up the perm for good in 1998. I haven’t had a perm in 12 years! I eventualy began locking my hair and have been wearing this style for 7 years. The best hair decision I have ever made!!
I had my first relaxer when I was 16 years old. At that time, the relaxers were all lye base. It was done in the basement of a nieghbor’s home. All I can remember is that my hair was not as straight as I thought it would be. None of it broke off; my hair remained as healthy as it was prior to the relaxer, however, it was many years later when Revelon brought out a relaxer that I had it done again. Now, at this point in my life, I don’t use relaxers anymore. I haven’t had one since July, 2008.
I was in elementry school(late 70’s early 80’s) when my grandmother put the lye perm in my hair. I was so happy, running around the house shaking my hair like a white girl! Then she would set me under the dryer like some old lady and roller set my hair, I hated that! Once the rollers were out my curls were crunchy from the setting lotion she used. After soon many years of that, the last time I got my hair relaxed, she was appling the creame to my hair and after a while my scalp was on fire(like that scene from Malcom X the movie when he got his hair relaxed)! She quickly washed it out and all of my hair in the back of my head broke off. I was so upset! The next week she took me to the beauty parlor and I got a Jheri curl. So from the sixth grade until I graduated high school I had a curl. I refuse to go the college with a curl, so I got a relaxer again. Once I saw the group Zhane in the 90’s, I cut my hair natural. I been natural ever since and I will never look back!
I was about 6 years old and it was a cold day in 1969. I knew we were doing something special, because mom, my big sis, and I rode about 30 minutes away to some strange beauty shop. What I remember most was being assaulted by the strong smell and walking out with straight hair hanging down my back like a white girls. Bless my heart, when I decided to go natural, I had not idea what to expect. I was saddened to realize I didn’t remember my natural texture. After I finished transitioning and found my thick natural hair was pretty manageable, I asked my mom, “why did you get us perms?” She replied, “it was a social thing. It’s what all the women that could were doing.” This coming from a woman that constantly said, “if your friend jumped off a bridge, would you?”
My hair is healthier and longer than ever! I love switching my styles depending on my mood or choice of daily fashion. Social thing, please. I will not jump off that bridge again!
I was five…there is a picture of me i need to find of lil ol me sitting in the chair w/ a PCJ relaxer……bad times man!
My mother has like 3 c type hair, I have 4 c..needless to say she had NO idea what to do w/ it so quickly began to perm my hair.
By the time I was 16 and badly doing my own the damage was so bad and extensive, i had balds spots, by 18 i just cut it all off and started, over, and over and over again…trial and error , I just wish this site was along back then!
I was 13 it was for my it was for my 8th grade graduation I wanted one before that but my mother didn’t let me. She still didn’t want me to until I graduated high school but she gave in. After that I experimented with different length and colors I was just fascinated with all things hair and I just spent my high school years trying new things. I’m now 21 and I’m transitioning haven’t had a perm in 8 months I love it I can’t wait to completely transform, I already feel free,
Oh Lord!!!! Yes I remember. I was 12 years old when I got my first relaxer. My mother did not approve, so it was actually a friend of hers who took me to get it without her approval. I was just so excited to finally have my hair free and blowing in the wind. My mother’s friend took me to some shady looking salon down some alleyway. Well anyway, we get there and I hop up in the chair. The hair dresser applies the relaxer, but while she is doing so, she is also smoking, but I’m too preoccupied with how my new hair is going to look!!! Then comes the burn. No one told me that you can’t scratch or comb before a perm. truth was, I wasn’t supposed to be getting a perm in the first place. My mother’s friend’s daughter was getting one on that particular day, so they just decided to give me one as well. It burned until I came to the point of tears. Finally they washed it out, and I had the “desired” result. Long, down my back, silky, shiny, straight hair. I was in love with it, because that’s how hair was supposed to look right?? Anyway, my mom was mad when I came home with a perm, and my hair smelled like smoke for weeks after, no matter how many times I washed my hair. I had scaps all over my head, and, being 12, I didn’t know how to take care of my hair (styling wise, moisturizing wise) I didn’t even wrap my hair at night, so of course, I began the dreaded battle with breakage and split ends……………………On a happy note, I’m all natural now and have a full healthy head of hair!!!
I think I am one of few women of African descent who just never got hyped about perms. I kinda remember my first perm but I didn’t think it was a big deal. Neither my mother nor I kept up with it, plus I still liked getting my hair braided. I don’t hold any harsh feelings towards my mother, who is also natural now.
I do however feel disappointment towards my relatives who still perm my younger cousins hair. Some of them are barely in middle school with this slicked down greasey lookin hair. Whats the point of perming hair when you’re simply going to braid it? (when I said I got my hair braided I mean in extensions) Little girls should be little girls with braids and pigtails. I really don’t think its fair for parents to let a young lady younger than 15 to get their hair permed.
Its sad, but I honestly dont remember my first perm. I remember my mom braiding and twisting my hair as a child into little barrettes or scrunchies, but I clearly remember how thick my hair was. Everyone in my family would always say I had thick hair. I dont remember being really hair concious about my hair, i just remember not liking my hair because it was too thick hair. I loved perms, I would sneak and buy the super kinda because it’d make my hair super straight, and when the perm burned, I’d hold the pain for a few minutes longer just to make sure it got extra straight. Now I look back at that, as me not loving or accepting myself enough. I had low self esteem and just felt straight hair is what was pretty.
Im so glad I have a different defintion of what pretty or beautiful is today.
I remember when I was around 6 or 7..my hair was thick, long and “hard to comb” my older cousin did it for me and continued to do it until I was in high school. When she put it in, (the just 4 me with the tape included!!) she would ask me if it was burning yet..and I had to make sure I didn’t scratch the day of the relaxer. Oh the old days!!
I’ve never had a relaxer, ever cause I have ‘good hair’. I’ve asked about it, though — I was 12 or 13 and my hair was going through a funny stage. And people told me my hair would fall out if I apply a relaxer to it. I’m so glad they told me that!
I was 9. Me, my mom and sis all had long healthy hair. My mom and us four kids along with her boyfriend and his three kids all moved in together. That saddled my mom with FIVE natural heads (me, my sis, my mom and her boyfriend’s two daughters)to take care of and plus she was working all day too. It was too much. This was back in the summer of 1970.
We moved into a new neighborhood and lived next door to two girls who were close to our ages and they were sporting perms. I remember wishing I had one too. Little did I know I was about to get my wish.
Turns out, our new friends had a sister that was a beautician. So I went next door to get my hair done. I remember she put the relaxer creme in my hair and told me to tell her when it started burning. It did so really quickly but she didn’t want to take it out, but she did. Apparently that was long enough to get it straight enough.
I was so happy I wouldn’t have to get my hair pressed anymore. Now I don’t remember too much more about my hair that summer. But what I do remember is that my mom had not a single clue about how to take care of it. Nor did it even register that getting me a relaxer meant relaxing the new growth every six weeks. She couldn’t afford that. So I never got another another touch up past the initial application.
By Christmas, the brady bunch arrangement had not worked out and our family moved into a different house. I just remember my new growth being thick and my relaxed hair being hard, feeling like straw and very very dry. It was breaking off like crazy. My mom started pressing my roots and gradually cutting off the relaxed ends. By then I was very aware of my hair and how short it was. And shortly after that I was kinda taking care of my own hair too so my hair never, ever reached its former lengths, while my mom and sister, who had NEVER had a chemical on their hair (due to my experience)continued to have long thriving hair. As a result, I spent the rest of my live longing for LONG hair and having unhealty relaxed hair from the age of 23 to 43. Unfortunately, I didn’t find the key to gaining length and having long healthy hair until I was 46 years old.
Now that I’ve got it, long BSL natural hair…I couldn’t be happier! Chemicals will never touch my hair again!
My aunt took me to get my first relaxer when i was 14, 3 days before my first day of HS. i was ecstatic because i wanted straight hair my whole life. My hair was thick, long, and very healthy and most importantly i looked older. I wasn’t afraid to trim my ends like most black women are and only got my touchups in a salon. In less than 5 years, while in college I decided that i looked too stereotypical (guys actually said they can take me home to their grandmother because i was light skin with long hair! SMH) and decided to go natural. in 05 i did the big chop and have thick, long, very healthy, NATURAL HAIR since!
i’d just like to say that i am a little jealous of everyone that can remember their first relaxer. i had to be about 4, because that’s the only school picture i have of me with a puff. [it was perfectly round and sat directly on top of my head…:sigh:]
i was 7 seven when my mother whipped out that package of the infamous “Just for Me.” my mom used to work at a convalescent home and had no time to do my curly/tangled hair, so she relaxed it. am i happy? heck no! but in a sense i am glad she relaxed it because i can add it to my belt of wiseness.i grew up getting a relaxer every 6 weeks (yes every six weeks, sometimes four) never understanding why i got my hair relaxed. the only thing i knew was when moms had a box of that cream it meant it was relaxer time. 11 years before i decided for myself that relaxers were horrid. it took 11 years, but i’m not sad or regretful that i din’t go natural sooner. why should i? all that matters is that i’m natural now! 😀
moms harassed me the first couple months of my transition stage, actually she still harasses me to get a “texturizer.” same shxt ma…lol she doesn’t get that I DO NOT WANT ANY CHEMICALS IN MY HAIR. it’s irritating. but i went natural for me, and natural i shall stay.
I was 9 years old when I got my first relaxer. My mother applied it herself. The point was to make my hair easier to comb since I am prone to tangles and very tender-headed. I will say it served its purpose. My hair didn’t knot up as much after washing and it was easier to comb. I was happy because of this, not necessarily because of how it looked.
However, once I learned to take care of my natural hair I realized that could be easy as well. You just have to treat it differently than straight hair.
I was 13 when I got my first perm. A lot of my friends in school had perms and wore their hair straight, and I wanted to do so also. I started asking my mother when I was 11, but she made me wait until I was 13. I got it at the end of the eight grade school year, just in time for prom. Before then I would always wear my hair in braids and braided extenstions that my mother had done herself. When it was done I was really happy. I remember the next day when I went to school, one of my friends saw my hair and asked me if i permed my hair. I replied yes w. a big smile on my face and she noooo your hair was nice without the perm. Looking back I can understand why, my fried got a perm when she was younger and had a head full of long thick hair, at the time that she told me i shouldnt have gotten a perm, it was a shorter damaged bob.
I was 11 yrs old and it was for my communion–I found it to be an adventure the only time I was angry was when my mother decided to use my aunt’s beautician and that’s when the back of my hair fell out and I had to go to school like that–I was not happy at all. Rocking a hairstyle that didn’t come out until the late 80’s was not cool.
I was 11. My mom told me she wouldn’t have to do my hair in the morning and that I would be able to do my own hair but I was just one of those girls who had long hair but only did ponytails anyway…
I had no idea of what a relaxer was really about or the concept. I do remember the first day at school I got a lot of attention on my hair. It looked longer and stretched out. even my teacher who was white said she liked it. It wasn’t until college I learned relaxers are something we don’t “have” to get.
btw did anyone ever sometimes feel nauseous or have a headache after they got a relaxer ?
I remember that from when when I was in my early teens and I was told that’s normal to happen but it’s alright
FOUR YEARS OLD! I never remembered having natural hair consequently. I grew up in fear on my nappy hair appearing and was so happy after I had my perm (not during of course…the experience was always TORTOROUS…the burning, the scabs). I was so glad to be done with perms when I went natural. No money spent on upkeep, no more pain. Now i get to enjoy my natural curls and kinks. I love my hair!
The first time I permed my hair I was 16 yrs old. It was a decision I chose to make. My mom never wanted me to perm it in the first place. You see, my mother is white, native indian and black, so therefore, with her gorgeous hair, I to have the same. But, growing up around mostly white people and seeing their straight hair blowing in the wind, made me feel that that was the way to go AND my mother wasn’t doing my hair for me anymore. So, for my 16th birthday my dad took me to the States and while we were out there, he took me to get hair permed in a salon in New York.
I permed my hair one time a yr after that(for some reason I didnt have to perm it the regualr amount of times it’s supposed to be done). Getting closer to the 4 yrs margin, I did have to perm my hair a little more often. My hair had started breaking and I started to miss my fight curls and thick hair. So, at the age of 20 I stopped perming it. I tried to get the parts that had broken off back to normal on my own, but that didn’t work, so at 24 I decided to start going to a salon. Now 1 yr later, its back to the way it used to be.
The only person I was angry at up until last yr, was myself. My mother had always told me, “Don’t perm your hair, you’re going to regret it!” I chose not to listen to her, and like a mother always is, she was right!
But thankfully, my hair is back to its normal, although it’s alot of work to maintain, I love every bit of it.
I was 13. I think it was just that she thought I was old enough to take care of my hair on my own without her or my sisters plaiting it every couple nights. She was dead wrong and I wished I had my hair back in natural plaits.
I already posted about myself, but I just wanted to say that my daughter has BSL hair and it is extremely thick with several textures in it. I would never perm it and will not let her do it until she is over 18, if that is her choice. Sometimes it takes over 6 hours to shampoo, dry, and style her hair but I would never make her sacrifice for my convenience. I will definitely show her this website from now on so that she can celebrate the beauty that is her natural hair.
I know that I was in 8th grade when I got my first relaxer. My father had my hair cut and a curl put in my hair, yes a curl, when I went to sixth grade (’92) and I was DYING to have something different and up to date. My sister advised me on it and I did it myself. I have wanted to go natural since I became an adult, but it is so difficult with my job (Army); our headgear is unforgiveable. I go as long as possible between perms and am counting down until I will be free to wear my hair as I please. I love this website, I will be an expert when my time finally comes.
I was 5 years old and I remember crying and begging my mother to wash it out. It was Just For Me and it broke all my hair off in the back. I am still self conscientious about the back of my head, smh. I wish I never had, one but I think I hated the straighten comb just as much.
Before we moved down south, I didn’t even know what a relaxer was. I couldn’t understand why some black girls had straight hair but I didn’t.
I got my first relaxer at 12; the end of the first month of 7th grade. My Gramma is a beautician and she had been doing our hair for about a year. She convinced my little sister to let her relax her hair (she was 8 at the time). I guess she wanted to kill two birds with one stone because she relaxed my hair the next day. I agreed to it because she said something to the tune of “it’s just like pressing except your hair stays straight when it gets wet.” My hair was probably a little past BSL then.
Everybody ranted and raved about how nice my hair was. But like someone upthread said, I was a geek and I couldn’t handle the attention my hair drew so I pulled it back into a ponytail everyday. By the end of the school year my hair had broken off to APL. It got shorter and shorter through out high school, though some of that was because I cut it.
I’m not mad at my Gramma for relaxing my hair. It’s kind of ironic that she’s going natural now! lol
South Loop Socialite: you had some beautiful chows. I had one like the brown one on the left. RIP Heidi 🙁
I didn’t have one prior to the first grade, but I know that in my first grade class pictures my hair is long but super thin – so I had to have gotten my first relaxer at around 6.
Now it seems outrageous and like what the f was my mom thinking, but at the time I remember her telling me my hair would look pretty and straight so I was all for it.
I kept that attitude up until I got into high school. I would feel my new growth come in and I always liked the texture and I just really wanted to know how my real hair looked. I was kind of mad at my mom for making that decision for me (she claimed I had too much hair for her to deal with), because I knew that it was going to take balls and a lot of time to get the hair that I had in pre-school back.
I was 5 when I got my first relaxer and I don’t remember anything about it. The only evidence of it is my kindergarten picture: I look like I’d gotten caught out in the rain. It was flat and greasy and VERY short because the relaxer basically broke it all off.
I didn’t get another relaxer until I was 12 and entering middle school. I don’t really remember having an opinion about it either…it was a decision my mother just made for me. I was such a geek back then and hair wasn’t that big of a deal (at least not at that point). Well, just as was the case when I was 5, the relaxer broke most of my hair off. My 7th grade picture shows the proof. But this time around I just kept getting the crack because “that’s what young ladies with this hair do.”
I’m long past holding grudges against my mom for her parenting choices BUT I wish she’d known just a little more about hair care. Her hair’s been short all her life and when I think about what she used to do to it, and how I basically followed her example because I had no other, it makes SO much sense. She’s been wearing a TWA for 20 years. If she ever gets around my dad’s objections to long nappy hair and starts Sisterlocks, she might actually have long hair in her 70s for the first time ever. (Interestingly, he doesn’t have a problem with his daughters’ long nappy hair.)
My mom gave me my first relaxer at age 6, I think. I had this huge “unruly” afro (thanks, dad) that did not fit in with our hectic single mom lifestyle.
Long story short nearly all my hair felt out. All of it broke off.
I don’t blame her, she didn’t know any better. She had even used one of those “kiddie perms”.
I didn’t know any better either, and continued to relax my hair until this year, at 17.
Never ever going back ever nooo you canNOT make me.
Death before relaxer, I say.
I was 13. I had been begging my mom for years to relax my hair, because all of my friends had relaxed hair. She kept telling me no, because she said I wouldn’t take proper care of it and then I’d have no hair. So finally, for my 13th birthday, she took me to a Dominican salon in Harlem where her secretary used to get her hair done and they put Fabu-laxer in my hair. I remember being absolutely APPALLED at how much it burned. I sat there crying and this older woman rubbed my hand and told me it would be ok, that I would love my hair when it was done. I had washed my hair the night before because it had been pressed and I wanted to get it back to its natural state prior to the perm. My freshly washed scalp was NOT feeling that sodium hydroxide in the least. When I left the salon, I had a lingering headache and scabs all over my head, but I was in love with my soft, straight hair. After that, I would avoid relaxing for as long as possible– up to four months. So it’s now fourteen years later and I just made the decision to stop relaxing. Wish me luck!
I was 9 and I begged my mom for the relaxer. I only had it done every 4 months and mostly wore my hair braided. I around the age of 12 I started getting it done every 2 months and wearing it straight.
I was in preschool, so 4 or 5 years old. My mom had her friend put a relaxer in my hair. I remember screaming and crying with snot bubbles coming from my nose because my head was on fire. My mothers friend finally ask her what she did to my hair the night before and my mom confessed to scratch my scalp to remove dandruff. Mom didn’t know better at the time. My mother’s friend replied “poor baby! No wonder she’s screaming.” Needless to say it was horrific. But still, 13 years later, I had my hair relaxed. I’ve been chemical free about a year and a half.
I got my first relaxer at 14. I begged my mom for it. A neighbor of ours put it in for me. I loved how long/stretched out my hair was. I got my last relaxer at 22. I haven’t looked back since!
I was 5 when I got my first relaxer, for picture day:) My natural hair (what I can recall) wasn’t very hard to “manage”. It was wiry, somewhat thin, wispy, and soft. I don’t know why I got a relaxer but I sure didn’t need it for my fragile strands. I don’t resent my mother so much for making hair choices for me as a child. She was a first time mother doing what she thought all AA mothers did. In fact, I was doing her hair at 8 years old! I can only feel the tinge of resentment when she looks at my natural fro now and shakes her head in disgust, wonder, and misunderstanding. I feel she thinks she’s “invested” so much into my hair as a youth and I have just thrown it all away.
@NapturallyHappy, I TOTALLY feel you!! My mom’s from Guyana, born to a black mother and Indian father and my black cousin’s sit around gushing about my hair and how I’m a “coolie girl” and all that and it just makes me feel awkward and sick to my stomach.
Whenever people comment, “I LOVE your hair! You must be mixed…” I always wish, for a second, that the answer was “No.”
Also, with all these hair blogs and great natural hair care information going around, does anyone else notice that very few naturals have “bad and nappy” hair nowadays? And the ones that do stop once a friend hooks them up? So this whole “bad and nappy black hair” thing is misinformation? And we all have beautiful hair, we just can’t use a white girl’s hair regimen cuz that makes our hair “bad and nappy?”
I wanted to add, I feel Jessie further up. I grew up in Vermont, and all of my friends and classmates were white. I wanted to look like the little white girls with the long, flowing hair. I never had long flowing hair, or anything close to it. But I can understand the many reasons why my mother chose to relax my hair at such an early age. It was hard enough being the only black child everywhere I went. It would have been even worse for me to be the only black child and nappy on top of that!
BajanPrincess, I’m not angry with my mother. I’m angry with the societal norms that made little black girls feel like less if their hair/noses/skin didn’t meet the standard. A lot of people talk about the Caribbean like some utopia where everyone is made to feel beautiful and where your natural looks/locks are celebrated. That’s such bull. I think the Caribbean is so freakin color-concious, hair-concious that it’s sickening. Things have been changing in recent years, but when I was growing up, adults around me made it very clear who was favored – light-skin, long hair, thin noses. It sounds so ridiculous now, but it was a reality growing up. Sick thing is I found out later in life, from old classmates, that they envied my hair. I was shocked. I wish I’d seen the beauty in my natural hair then. I would never have permed and my mom would have been ok with that decision. She really only permed because we wanted it so badly and, at the time, it was normal.
Growing up, I was never told that either I or my hair was beautiful by any of the women in my family. There are a lot of mixed people in my country and all of the mixed girls I knew were told all the time how pretty they were and what pretty hair they had. They got all of the attention from boys, teachers, everyone. I think I paid too much attention to all of that and felt left out. My first perm stretched my hair well past the middle of my back and I think I felt beautiful for the first time.
If I could go back now, chemicals would never have touched my hair. I’ve cut off just over 2 1/2 feet of hair in the last 10 years alone. Makes me sick. I’ve been natural a while now, but I’ve really only truly learned to care for my hair in the last 2 or so years. I know it’s just hair and it’s not all about the length, but thinking about what you lost due to ignorance about what you had is incredibly sad.
I was 5.
I remember the ladies in my family talking about something big that had to do with me, but I didn’t really understand what was going on.
I don’t remember the reasons. It all seemed like a big deal. I don’t even remember understanding that my hair had changed. Ages 1-5 didn’t really bring much understanding of hair, so I didn’t get what had happened. As I got a little older, I just came to understand relaxers as necessary. How many times did I hear (or say to myself) “You need a perm”? It never even occurred to me that one would not wear a relaxer. What else was there?
I don’t feel upset about it. It was the norm. It was all they knew. My mom’s hair barely waves, let alone “kinks”, but she perms faithfully. I was more upset about the family backlash at my decision to go natural. That’s more where the emotions come into play.
I received my first relaxer at the age of 10. I had very good hair dressers at home, so the most discomfort I ever had was a little itching (after which my hair would be immediately rinsed). Though I love my hair now, with all the activity and sweat of my teen years having a relaxer at the time was a great option. I had A LOT of hair and the relaxer allowed me to be more independent and I was able to keep my hair looking nice on my own. I actually think my mom decided on relaxing my hair because I was gelling my natural hair to DEATH! I didn’t have the resources back then that exist now. There were no talks of conditioner washes, no BGLH.
I don’t have any ill feelings towards my mom for relaxing my hair. Having a relaxer was great! My reasons for loving it when I had it are the same as me loving my natural hair now: freedom! Now it’s no more running to the salon for touch-ups and, funny enough, when I flat iron my hair now, it actually looks even better than it did when I had a relaxer. I’m planning to work in international health and I don’t want to be worrying about new growth when out of the country. (Both summers I spent abroad during college were followed by MAJOR trims when I got back.)
To anyone who has ill feelings toward their mothers, I would say give the old ladies a break. Black women have been relaxing their hair for so long it’s just become part of our culture. We pierce the ears of babies, we relax our hair. It’s nothing personal. My mom didn’t relax my hair because she has race issues; it was for convenience and to stop me from further damaging my hair with that daggon’ black gel- and it worked! Whatever your mom’s mentality, I am 99% sure that at the time she was doing what she thought was best for you. And you should appreciate that.
And for those of you who have family or friends who give you flack, I sympathize with you. Last week I had to tell my black male boss that my hair is so big “because I’m black and this is how my hair grows out of my head.” Would definitely be annoying to have to deal with that at home.
I was 13 or 14 and demanded it for a long time before my mother reluctantly took me to the salon. It took about an hour and a half to relax my hair since it would simply not process. I loved it even though it was breaking immediately. My hair colour is very black and the relaxer seemed to make it look super black and I loved that too.
My mother said I looked like a wet dog with slicked back hair but I was happy passing that fine toothed comb through with ease and swinging my newly straightened hair lol.
I never got a relaxer, thank God, but had always asked my mom for one. She would tell me that a relaxer would make my hair fall out, and I would stop asking for a while.
Do/did any of you discuss the feelings that you have/had (I see some of you said you were/are angry) with your mothers? Do they feel any remorse or regret for perming your hair?
i really don`t know. i didn`t remember a time that i didn`t have a perm other than when i went natural. my mom did keep my hair out of a relaxer for a very long time though…almost a year & i remember my hair getting so long. i do have memories of my mother relaxing my hair when i was about 4. she used just for me, but i don`t know if it was the first time. so, i relaxed my hair for almost 15 years. my hair was damage by me doing my own perms, but mostly, it just stayed at the same length for SOOO long! that whole easier to manage thing to me is such BS! it makes me angry that so many people are so ignorant. well anyways, it`ll be a year in January that i`ve been natural, so congrats to me! 😀
I was about 7 and it was the “Just for Me” relaxer that came with the cassette tape instructions. My mom did it and it turned out ok, from the pictures I have. She always did my hair then, and she does my hair sometimes now (when I ask nicely of course!) Even though I’m 23 I still ask her to do my hair cause it brings back memories and we keep our bond strong that way too.
I got my first press at 9 or 10 and my first relaxer at 11. I remember being really excited to get my hair relaxed. It was this really important rite of passage and I wanted that sleek, straight hair. My father was totally against us getting our hair permed, but my mom took us anyway. I get angry about it now. I feel like little black girls were done such an injustice. We were cheated out of the joy of of celebrating one of our most important characteristics. When I think back to how closely-tied my hair and my self perception were, it’s no wonder I felt like an ugly growing up. It didn’t help that I grew up in a Caribbean nation where mixed girls with long, wavy hair were admired and celebrated and their hair held as the standard. I truly think that had I been taught to appreciate the absolutely beautiful hair that was growing out of my scalp, I would have felt so differently about myself. Such a sad legacy given to us. I’m happy we’re taking it back.
My mom did my first relaxer when I was 10. My mom did all of my relaxers, save one. I was excited because the plan was that it would make my hair much easier to manage. (Psssssyyyyccccchhh!!!!) I played with my hair hardcore, I put rollers in it, clips, and all sorts of nonsense. It was exciting for a while because it was new to me and people at school liked it.
Then my hair started to get brittle and break no matter what I put in it.
Cut to 12 years of hair frustration. To think I could have had healthy hair and put in so much less (wo)man-hours all this time.
I think I was about 7 or 8 years old when I got my first relaxer. I remember being sooo excited to be free of the pressing comb but little did I know my hair would fall like leaves in October. Seriously the only thing that saved my hair was going natural.
I got my first relaxer the day before I turned 15 as a birthday present. It was not what I really wanted. I begged my mom to let me lock my hair back then but she is an old fashioned Caribbean woman. Locks were frowned upon. Because I was desperate to do something other than my braids and twists I just went ahead and got my hair relaxed.
First off, wow! I can’t believe you guys used my pic again!! It’s actually one of my favorite pics from my childhood. I got my first relaxer about 2 years after this photo was taken. I loved being a little girl with long hair. lol… but if I could go back in time I would’ve asked my mom to never go down that road. I wasn’t someone that dreaded getting my hair done when I was younger but I definitely remember trying to “fight” the burning sensation of the relaxer so it could get super straight. lol Maybe that’s what has built up my pain threshold so much.
Honestly I’m not sure when, I would get a perm maybe once a year but my mom kept braids in my hair. The perm never would take though it used to burn so bad I would cry when it came to “perm day”. I spent most of my life in braids, when she finally let the beautician *i guess they talked her into it* consistently perming my hair every 2 months, it went from mid back to shoulder length. I am not sure my age, ….man I want to say 8 or 12 when that happened. Possibly 12!
WOOOWW! this is my first comment because I just found this site(which I Now LOVE!)
I recieved my first relaxer at 4. my aunt did it becuase my mother doesnt know how to do hair(even her own.. which is why she has locks for the past 10 years).I know i didn’t sit still becuase I never sat still even as a freshman in college I would alwyas jumo when it burns or shake through the pain. I did te BC about 2 months ago & now I notice how fast my hair has grown. & i love every second of it! just need to figure out what products to use for my hair.
I was about 13 when I got my first relaxer. I begged my mom, she was skeptical but agreed to put a mild one in my hair. U regretted it since. My relaxer life lasted from the age of 13 until 20 y.o. consisted of scabs on my scalp, horrible breakage and costly, LOOOONG hours at the hair dresser.
Stopped relaxing and never looked back.
I was 9 when my mom took me to the salon to get my relaxer. I had really thick, long hair that tangled easily. I seriously remember 3 different people trying to comb out my hair so they could put creamy crack on it…
And when it was done, I remember have a super straight, long high ponytail. I never thought my hair could ever get like that.
Then when I turned 14, I realized my hair was thinning a bit. Which is ridiculous because my hair is really thick.
Been relaxer free since 16. 🙂
87 Responses
i was 14 when I got my first relaxer… Honestly, I loved it… It was thick and long and straight… even though I’m “natural” now… It took me 10 years to realize I could get my hair just as straight w/o a relaxer if that was the look I was going for… I never left perms in very long. If even started to feel a tingle… I washed that ish out! I always did my edges and middle first. I got touch ups like twice a year. The problem was the heat damage and the perm combination that broke my hair off. So I stopped putting heat in my hair around the same time I stopped getting a perm… I’m pretty sure, if I kept going the way I was going… I’d be bald by now.. I’m 34. Oddly enough, I got a perm to fit in… not because I wanted one. I could have worn my afro but being picked on constantly was not my idea of a happy high school experience.
i begged for a relaxer growing up and my mom would never let me get one. when she passed away, my aunt allowed me to finally have my wish, at the age of 12. it lasted for all of a few months before it damaged my MBL hair- took all the quality and length away. i’ve been natural again now for the past decade. no relaxer will come near the heads of any of my children. i only have a little boy now, so maybe it won’t be an issue for him
I was eight when I got my first relaxer. Up until that point my mother took me to the salon to get presses for special occasions only. I did NOT want the relaxer. I remember my older sister telling me they hurt, and I was not open to pain (as if most kids are, lol). My hair got really thin but I kept getting relaxers regularly until I turned 20 and I got my last relaxer then.
My mom and I have talked about the relaxer. She does have great remorse. But I told her not to worry about it. Her decision was societal and not her fault. She was taking the advice of our hair stylist. Why wouldn’t she believe an cosmetologist? I don’t blame her and I’m not angry with her either. Now my mother, sister and I are all natural. We love it! We are free.
Thank you for allowing me to share my story!
I got a relaxer to ease my transition into a private middle school. Until I was 11, my hair was always in 7-10 of those big puffy two strand twists that little girls wear. Hot combs weren’t going to cut it and my mom was getting a lot of pressure from family members. I remember the discomfort, the smell, and the burn but I felt like a right of passage at the time. I’m glad I did it because I’m a grown women now who’s been there, done that and no one can make me question whether I want to go back. By the time I was 15, I stop relaxing and got my hair heat straightened. At 18, I was fully natural rocking a fro to class.
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OH YES!!! I was 8 years old. I had hair down to my bottom. It was too thick however to fit into those stupid “i love genie” cones. it was 1988. My mother was dead set against it. She wanted me to wait until I was 16 but I begged her. My father side were more into weaves. She obliged and to this day I wish I never relaxed my hair EVER. I wish I would have waited until 16 b/c I’m quite sure I would have enjoyed my natural hair and it would probably be down to my knees once blown out. When I have a daughter I will never apply relaxer to her hair. If she wants to when she is a teenager she can. I just hope by then our society will be more accepting of natural styles and there will be less of the “stink eye”.
I’m very late with this response but I was 5 or 6 when I got my first relaxer.My grandmother was doing it at first then she found a horrible stylist. By 4th grade I had to go to the doctor and get medication because my scalp was severely burned. My grandmother gave me 2 years off and by 6th grade I was getting them again from a different stylist, my hair grew with her to APL but I always felt very stigmatized going to that salon like I was an outsider so I stopped going to her at the age of 18. From 18-24 I was going to several different people getting relaxers etc and my hair never grew past shoulder length, I stopped relaxing my hair because I actually started paying attention to what I was putting in it. My grandmother is from the Dominican Republic (my mother passed away) and there curly hair is VERY frowned upon, mulatto/black Dominicans are raised into self-hatred; I’m not bashing Dominicans but sadly it’s reality. Not ALL Dominicans are the same but it’s common, when I told her I was going natural she was very accepting but telling her how it made me feel throughout my childhood is futile, it’s like I’m speaking Chinese; she doesn’t understand the negative aspects of the experiences I had so I just let it be.
I was 10 years old, it was 1998. My family had just moved from Greenville to Charlotte. My mother’s family is full of men that do hair. But when we moved to Charlotte we left all of them behind. I’m my mother’s only daughter, she barely put effort into her own hair so doing my was a bit of a stretch. Both of my brothers have 3b/3c hair, I’ll say I’m a mix of 3c and 4a. My curls are very defined but they’re not very large in diameter I knew my hair wasn’t that terrible, she was just lazy. My Uncles never complained about doing my hair they would just wash it and blow dry it strait, it would last for about 2 weeks during the school year. They didn’t bother during the Summer because I’m a tom boy i would just sweat it out anyway. I started transitioning after my pregnancy. Reason 1 because the second half of my pregnancy I didn’t get a relaxer at all, i just flat ironed my roots. Reason 2 I had a daughter, I didn’t want her to feel who she was is wrong. I wanted her to feel beautiful no matter what her hair looked like. 2 weeks after having my daughter (against my grandmother’s wishes) i got a relaxer. I felt so wrong. I’ve been natural every since. I made my BC July 3rd and i LOVE, LOVE, LOVE my hair. I’m trying to figure out what works for it, but so far it’s going really good.
I agree, my daughter started my knowledge in regards to hair care. She has 3a/3b curls and I had NO IDEA how to manage curly hair, her hair is gorgeous but my grandmother kept talking about blowing her hair out, etc and how her hair looked ‘unkempt’ curly (mind you like I said she has 3A/3B curls). So I went online and researched how to maintain curly hair, two years later she said ‘mommy what’s that?” when I was @ the salon with her getting my hair done. That’s when it started to hit me, I didn’t want my daughter seeing me constantly relaxing my hair because I was scared of its natural texture. I thought of the type of message I would be sending her, especially since there aren’t many curlies in the main stream media.
I remember my first relaxer being a Kiddy Kit relaxer. I was in my teens. I don’t remember much else about my first relaxer.
Before that, I’d worn my hair either pressed and curled or braided. Even after my first relaxer, my mother continued to braid my hair (with extensions) periodically.
I was 21 when i got my first relaxer. I had just had my son and my hair was then too thick for me to handle and was growing out of control. so my older sis suggested it and i thought, “why not i haven’t done that before”. I had hennahed and hot combed and braided and beaded but never a perm. After it was done i loved it and my hair grew more for about a year or so. Then suddenly it started to fall out and it seemed like nothing i did would reverse this. So I cut it off and went back to what i knew best and loved (my natural hair). I just turned 28 on the 17th and my hair is back down my back and feeling free as ever. 🙂
I was 12 or 13 years old and begged my mom for a relaxer because all my cousins had relaxers and I had a huge tumble weed of dry frizzy hair. I remember the feeling of long hair down to the middle of my back. I felt like a princess. By high school my hair had broken off multiple times, in college I learned to care for my hair myself and retained length. After graduation a lot of my friends began going natural and last August I decided to try transitioning. One year later I’m here and loving every minute of it.
I got my first relaxer when I was 5 years old. I remember it was PCJ and I was really excited because I thought my hair would instantly be long and pretty like the girl standing next to her mother on the box (remember that?). It didn’t exactly turn out that way. I was so young, so I don’t remember if there was damage, but I look back at my childhood pictures and my hair looked so…limp! It was what my Latina friends (lovingly) refer to as “dead hair.” Now I am really considering growing out my natural hair, but I have so many conflicting feelings. I am sad that I don’t even remember my natural hair texture. I am hurt that my mother didn’t allow me to experience my natural hair. I know that she was doing what she thought was best, but I am an elementary school teacher and I see the daily result of girls who don’t think their hair is acceptable. I am worried about what people will think of me with natural hair (my stylist is very old school and anti-natural, plus she will miss the weekly $18 + tip she gets from me) and what I will think of myself. Luckily my mom and aunt now wear natural hair and are very supportive and non-judgmental. I’m also happy that there are sites like this to give me ideas and motivation.
I was 13. My Mom had held out after years of begging. I am not anti-relaxer so I don’t regret my Mom’s decision. She took great care of my hair and taught me how to. My hair thrived with the relaxer, just as it does naturally. So, I didn’t feel guilty about relaxing my own daughter’s hair. She is 11 and has been begging for years. I make sure her hair is conditioned, moisturized and treated with as little heat as possible (I do wash & sets on her). I use the same great products on her relaxed hair as I use on my natural hair. I have shown her through my own hair choices that she will be beautiful whether her hair is long or short, relaxed or natural. She knows that she has to love who she is no matter what and take good care of what God gave her! Not all relaxer memories are bad. 🙂
I was 10 years old and I was SOOO excited! I would finally have straight pretty hair like all the grown-ups in my family! No more getting my hair pressed, with the threat of the belt sitting right beside me, so my mom could whoop me if I dared cry or jump LOL. Fast forward 22 years later, and I am sickened by my limp, lifeless, hair. I’m tired of being scared to go out in the rain, work out and get sweaty, or go swimming. I’m tired of scalp burns and bald spots. I’m tired of that suitcase of hair products I have to carry with me if I I’m away from home for even one night. I’m tired of never letting ANYONE touch my hair!
I don’t blame my mom for it at all. I have so many memories of her spending long hours lovingly caring for my natural hair before it was permed. She deep conditioned, detangled carefully and patiently, and braided my hair into styles that kept for weeks at a time. At night she would moisturize my scapl and make certain that I always, always wore a cap to bed.
Unfortunately perms were the celebrated practice for women in our family; a right of passage into womanhood, so to speak. But now that my hair is natural, my family is very supportive, and also VERY curious, b/c it’s a novelty for them, really. And I just LOVE it now when people want to touch my hair!!!
I remember my first relaxer. I was 18 years old and I made the decision to have my hair relaxed because I wanted to see what it felt like. I’ve never had a negative view of my hair, I’ve never heard my mother make a negative remark or even those i was around do so either, and interestingly enough my view of my hair hasn’t been changed by the media. So it wasn’t like I didn’t like what I had– I was just curious because others around me were getting perms so I got it; and I didn’t like it – I’ve always had long hair but I didn’t like how the permed hair felt (to me it felt unnatural, like straw and lifeless, just hanging there doing nothing).I mostly missed how it felt when it’s wet. I eventually cut all of my hair off and started over with my hair. I just loved it. My hair is super thick and it feels alive under my hands. Nothing at all can be compared to that.
I was 12. My mother let me wear my hair down and natural for about a year, she must not have liked the way it looked, or figured since I was going to junior high, I should have a relaxer. There really wasn’t much conversation about it. I just know that she did the first one and then taught me how to do my own and I did it for about two decades before “seeing the light”. Yes, I regret getting my first relaxer, if I better understood why I, as an african american female, relaxed my hair and realized early on that I really was doing it in an effort to “fit in” or look more Eurocentic, I would have preferred to have been older and wiser before deciding (or having the decision made for me) to relax.
I still love me some mama though 🙂
I was 5 years old and I remember being so happy because my mom said that my hair would look like the girls on the PCJ box and she promised that my head would not hurt anymore when she was combing it. I.WAS.SOLD. I remember FEELING the relaxer being rinsed out of my hair and feeling this mass of slickness just laying down my back. I looked over at my mother with bright eyes and she laughed at me. When it was all done, I had this beautiful head of long, “shiny”, straight hair and I didn’t know what to do with myself… until about the 4th grade when I was allowed to do my own ponytails and I discovered gel and hairspray! That was the end of it. I struggled with my hair until about college. It started to grow back to its’ fullness and length but then I BC’ed and that is a story to be told another time! 🙂
My mom first relaxed my hair in fourth grade when i began taking swim classes…i was sooooo excited i wanted straight “easy-to-manage” hair like my older sister. My mother has 5 daughters of whom I am the darkest skinned so throughout my life i’ve heard comments about my dark-skin and “nappy” hair in contrast to my mother’s light skin and straight hair (i have never seen my mother’s natural hair texture other than pictures). Of course relaxing and chlorine dont mix, my hair had broken off and ends had split. Throughout middle, junior, and 3yrs of highschool i continued with the relaxing. I suffered with my self-esteem, self-image, and self-identity issues. My older, 23-yo sister went natural about 6yrs ago and i loved her hair, she ROCKED an afro and i admired her. So after seeing my sister looking gorgeous with her natural mane and seeing a Tyra episode about black women who bleached their skin and another about black women with relaxed vs. natural hair I decided to stop relaxing my hair my senior year in hs, I saw it as a means to an end of self-doubt, hatred, and a path to self discovery. I wanted to show my younger sisters they didnot have to conform to European beauty standards and they are beautiful the way they are. My hair serves as a representation of my heritage(which i do not know too well having enslaved ancestors and all). I had my last perm a few days before my 18th birthday, May 14th…and i have never been happier!!! I love my natural hair textre it is so soft and not at all “nappy”. I still get negative comments from my mother about my hair when it is in it’s natural state free of two-strand twists or some other style she views as taming my “unkempt” hair but i love the freedom and versatility of my hair being natural. I have expressed to my mother my disappointment and sadness of her chemically straightening my hair and protested vehemently when she relaxed my 15 yo sister’s hair a few years ago (when i was still relaxed) and have let it be known that I will not allow her to relax my 6and9 yo sister’s hair, i have even encouraged her to go natural(but she won’t). I even asked her why she relaxed my hair to which she replied: “I got tired of combing it and i couldn’t straighten it because it would melt, it was nappy!” Now having a daughter of my own I refuse to chemically straighten her hair and being 3 weeks old, i am quick to correct anyone who comments that she had “good hair” because it is curly and silky. I wont let her be brainwashed or feel ashamed of her hair. I LOVE MY NATURAL HAIR 😀
I was 12. It was a cold November day. I had been pulled out during class [PE of all classes]by my oldest sister and taken to Nashville. I wasn’t told why or where we were going. We finally arrived at some random hairdresser to whom my sister had been referred. No one told me not to scratch my head- which had been all sweaty from PE and scratched because my scalp was dry. Anyway, 5 minutes into the application, THE BURN began. The hairdresser could barely finish applying the perm before she had to rinse it out. I was hysterically crying. She styled my hair and sent me on with a tube of PERM REPAIR. WTH? Needless to say, my hair has not been as THICK or as LONG (it used to be mid back length. I love my sister, but I still have some unresolved issues with that day. WHEW this has been theraputic!
Well, 22 years later I decided to end the cycle of dryness & breakage. I cringed when my same sister had some RANDOM stylist that someone had referred, and had her 11 year old get a relaxer. Two relaxers later and severe breakage she has decided to have her go natural again! Hopefully this time she has learned!
I was 14 and in 9th grade when I got my first relaxer. I had shoulder length hair and was amazed how my hair was blowing in the wind…felt like I was in a Gentle Treatment commercial(I am dating myself!!).
my mom first relaxed my hair when i was seven the day before my first starring role in a play
YES YES YES!! I WAS 8YRS OLD.MY SISTER AND I WERE ON SUMMER VACATION TO VISIT OUR GRANDPARENTS. OUR HAIR WAS NOT KINKY. BUT B/CAUSE IT WAS SO LONG AND THICK IT WOULD GET REALLY TANGLED AFTER WASHING. I GUESS MY G-MA DIDN’T REALLY KNOW HOW TO MANAGE OUR HAIR. NEEDLESS TO SAY, WE HAD A COUSIN WHO WORKED IN JCPENNY SALON IN CANTON, OH. G-MA TOOK US THERE ONE DAY AND THE DREADED CYCLE OF RELAXERS HAD BEGUN!! OVER THE YEARS I CAME TO DEVELOP A LOVE/HATE RELATIONSHIP WITH MY HAIR..LOL..NOW AT 28, I HAVE DECIDED TO TRANSITION BACK TO MY NATURAL HAIR AND I AM LOVING THE FREEDOM IT BRINGS! I AM 8-9 MONTHS INTO TRANSITION AND MY HAIR AND SCALP ARE NOTICEABLY HEALTHIER. ALSO, MY HAIR GROWS AT AN ALARMING RATE! IT WAS ALREADY LONG BUT NOW I THINK IT HAS TAKEN ON A LIFE OF IT’S OWN AND I’M LOVING IT!THANKS BGLH FOR ALLLLLL OF THE ENCOURAGEMENT THIS SITE OFFERS!
I don’t remember getting my first relaxer. I think I got my first one against what most people call the “safe” age at either 2 or 3. I started head-start at 3 and my hair was deffinitely relaxed by then. I remember living in Alaska though and wearing my straight leg, starch stiff pale sea foam jean pants with my blue and pink sweater on. And I remember sitting forever and enduring the painful itchiness I would feel. I remember thinking it was so terrible to have to spend so much time on hair and found it heartbreaking to know that it was only people who looked like me who had to deal with such a process. My hair reached the middle of my back. I was told that I was a gorgeous child, but I couldn’t understand why all of me wasn’t.
I’m 20yrs old now. I start transitioning last Halloween with my last relaxer, I’ve had a BC, and now I’m rockin what Mama was tryna hide; A spiral curled fro’ed out crown.
I’m Puerto Rican and unfortunately I was one of the ones whose family started relazing their hair at early ages. For me it was the age of four. I still remember all throughout my life hating having to perm my hair and just wanting to be free. So many times, I would try to let it grow out only to be met with disapproving comments. I have had a perm on my hair for 30 years. I am tired of it and am planning to bc it off. I have not permed it since November 2009 and I am looking for someone to cut it off! I want to be free, I want to be me.
Being of Puerto Rican background, relaxers are like second nature to culture sadly. Thankfully, my mother regrets giving me one to this day. She’s always told me my hair is beautiful.
My first relaxer was when I was about 6 years old. Truth be told I don’t remember it, but many more relaxers followed all the way until I was 15 years old. I remember the later relaxers in my life. I was searching for the “holy grail” hair: smooth shiny and straight. I basically wanted to be white (no offense to white people). I never was satisfied with how the salon ladies styled my hair. It never looked the way I wanted it. This caused many sobbing spells. One sad day at 15, my hair was stiff and stood up on end without me knowing. Everyone at school laughed at me. I couldn’t even go to class. That day I made a choice and did my first BC. After some growth, I got my hair locked.
After wearing my hair locked for 4-7 years, I BC again and started a TWA not knowing how to properly care for my hair. Went back to creamy crack twice. Then I finally woke up after my mother in law pulled me aside and gave some “constructive” crit about not letting my hair grow out to “Don King” proportions. I finally found sites like these and my hair looks great and I’m proud of it.
12 years old my mother and aunt who is a beautician talked me into a perm. We argued for hours then I finally gave in only because they said “Just this ONE time!!” which was a lie.
I was a child who took PRIDE in her African heritage and NATURAL hair. The perm was the beginning of myself consciousness and SELF-ESTEEM issues.I began to think my blackness wasn’t enough in American society. I tried to bleach my gums(which was painful), LOSE weight and GAIN in the same time span. 2006 I decided to go natural again I did not have my mothers support but I did not care! because I felt like a QUEEN!!! when I cut it short.
The first time my mother put a relaxer in my hair I was about 7 or 8 years old. I had hair down to the middle of my back & it was too much to handle naturally, I guess. I didn’t like the time put into relaxing it, or the pain. As I got older, I would only relax my hair twice a year, but I finally stopped using them after I had my son at the age of 28. I’m very happy with the health of my hair & how I take care of it. I only put heat on it twice a month now & get regular trims every six weeks.
I was 5 (1984) and I remember it like yesterday. Every Saturday my grandmother, who was a professional stylist back in the day, would wash my long thick hair, detangle it, sit me under the dryer, press it, pull it, and finally candy curl it. The process would start at about 8a.m. and end about 4p.m. Well this Saturday, my mom pulls out a mysterious jar of this smelly white stuff and slathers it on. I mean from roots to tip! My grandmother protested from the background, but my mother was hell bent on getting my hair to “lay down” like my sisters. It started to burn almost immediately. I was crying so hard that I started to hyperventilate, which I got in trouble for. They finally washed it out and I hated it from day one because of the tight spiked roller set. My head hurt and my hair was crunchy. I remember waking up and feeling the wetness from the chemical burns that had started to puss over. To add insult to injury, I got a gheri curl less than a year later…ARGHHHHH!!!
I got my first perm for my high school prom. Up until then it had been press and curl all the way. My mom asked if I was sure…I was definitely sure because I wanted a cute short hair cut that could only be achieved with a perm. I continued to perm for 5 years and then texturized for 2. Went back to the perm after a few years, then back to a texturizer. I finally went natural after a perm broke my hair off at the top, and a texturizer came out with me showing more scalp than curl. After the last texturizer I let my hair grow. A bad trim had me cutting my hair all over again. I have been natural for over a year and absolutely love it. My mom and sisters keep asking me when I am going to do my hair…
Same here.
I got my first perm in third grade back in the early 1970s. This was because my natural hair was very long and thick and I cried whenever it was time to wash and detangle it. They didn’t have any special moisturizers or leave in conditioners to help soften the hair at that time, so doing my hair was a big chore. My mom took me to several hair dressers to get a price, but none wanted to touch my hair for less than $25.00. She found someone who agreed to do it for $18.00 but after the hairdresser was done, she asked for the $25.00. I cried and carried on the whole time because my hair was so tangled and had to be combed out before she could do the perm. I was dissappointed to have my long straight ponytail put in a big braid. What was the difference? I had always worn my hair that way. The perm changed my hair texture, but my hair didn’t break. I didn’t get a perm again until 4 years later when I was trying to be cute in junior high school. I went natural off and on for years before I gave up the perm for good in 1998. I haven’t had a perm in 12 years! I eventualy began locking my hair and have been wearing this style for 7 years. The best hair decision I have ever made!!
I had my first relaxer when I was 16 years old. At that time, the relaxers were all lye base. It was done in the basement of a nieghbor’s home. All I can remember is that my hair was not as straight as I thought it would be. None of it broke off; my hair remained as healthy as it was prior to the relaxer, however, it was many years later when Revelon brought out a relaxer that I had it done again. Now, at this point in my life, I don’t use relaxers anymore. I haven’t had one since July, 2008.
I was in elementry school(late 70’s early 80’s) when my grandmother put the lye perm in my hair. I was so happy, running around the house shaking my hair like a white girl! Then she would set me under the dryer like some old lady and roller set my hair, I hated that! Once the rollers were out my curls were crunchy from the setting lotion she used. After soon many years of that, the last time I got my hair relaxed, she was appling the creame to my hair and after a while my scalp was on fire(like that scene from Malcom X the movie when he got his hair relaxed)! She quickly washed it out and all of my hair in the back of my head broke off. I was so upset! The next week she took me to the beauty parlor and I got a Jheri curl. So from the sixth grade until I graduated high school I had a curl. I refuse to go the college with a curl, so I got a relaxer again. Once I saw the group Zhane in the 90’s, I cut my hair natural. I been natural ever since and I will never look back!
I was about 6 years old and it was a cold day in 1969. I knew we were doing something special, because mom, my big sis, and I rode about 30 minutes away to some strange beauty shop. What I remember most was being assaulted by the strong smell and walking out with straight hair hanging down my back like a white girls. Bless my heart, when I decided to go natural, I had not idea what to expect. I was saddened to realize I didn’t remember my natural texture. After I finished transitioning and found my thick natural hair was pretty manageable, I asked my mom, “why did you get us perms?” She replied, “it was a social thing. It’s what all the women that could were doing.” This coming from a woman that constantly said, “if your friend jumped off a bridge, would you?”
My hair is healthier and longer than ever! I love switching my styles depending on my mood or choice of daily fashion. Social thing, please. I will not jump off that bridge again!
I was five…there is a picture of me i need to find of lil ol me sitting in the chair w/ a PCJ relaxer……bad times man!
My mother has like 3 c type hair, I have 4 c..needless to say she had NO idea what to do w/ it so quickly began to perm my hair.
By the time I was 16 and badly doing my own the damage was so bad and extensive, i had balds spots, by 18 i just cut it all off and started, over, and over and over again…trial and error , I just wish this site was along back then!
I was 13 it was for my it was for my 8th grade graduation I wanted one before that but my mother didn’t let me. She still didn’t want me to until I graduated high school but she gave in. After that I experimented with different length and colors I was just fascinated with all things hair and I just spent my high school years trying new things. I’m now 21 and I’m transitioning haven’t had a perm in 8 months I love it I can’t wait to completely transform, I already feel free,
Oh Lord!!!! Yes I remember. I was 12 years old when I got my first relaxer. My mother did not approve, so it was actually a friend of hers who took me to get it without her approval. I was just so excited to finally have my hair free and blowing in the wind. My mother’s friend took me to some shady looking salon down some alleyway. Well anyway, we get there and I hop up in the chair. The hair dresser applies the relaxer, but while she is doing so, she is also smoking, but I’m too preoccupied with how my new hair is going to look!!! Then comes the burn. No one told me that you can’t scratch or comb before a perm. truth was, I wasn’t supposed to be getting a perm in the first place. My mother’s friend’s daughter was getting one on that particular day, so they just decided to give me one as well. It burned until I came to the point of tears. Finally they washed it out, and I had the “desired” result. Long, down my back, silky, shiny, straight hair. I was in love with it, because that’s how hair was supposed to look right?? Anyway, my mom was mad when I came home with a perm, and my hair smelled like smoke for weeks after, no matter how many times I washed my hair. I had scaps all over my head, and, being 12, I didn’t know how to take care of my hair (styling wise, moisturizing wise) I didn’t even wrap my hair at night, so of course, I began the dreaded battle with breakage and split ends……………………On a happy note, I’m all natural now and have a full healthy head of hair!!!
I think I am one of few women of African descent who just never got hyped about perms. I kinda remember my first perm but I didn’t think it was a big deal. Neither my mother nor I kept up with it, plus I still liked getting my hair braided. I don’t hold any harsh feelings towards my mother, who is also natural now.
I do however feel disappointment towards my relatives who still perm my younger cousins hair. Some of them are barely in middle school with this slicked down greasey lookin hair. Whats the point of perming hair when you’re simply going to braid it? (when I said I got my hair braided I mean in extensions) Little girls should be little girls with braids and pigtails. I really don’t think its fair for parents to let a young lady younger than 15 to get their hair permed.
Its sad, but I honestly dont remember my first perm. I remember my mom braiding and twisting my hair as a child into little barrettes or scrunchies, but I clearly remember how thick my hair was. Everyone in my family would always say I had thick hair. I dont remember being really hair concious about my hair, i just remember not liking my hair because it was too thick hair. I loved perms, I would sneak and buy the super kinda because it’d make my hair super straight, and when the perm burned, I’d hold the pain for a few minutes longer just to make sure it got extra straight. Now I look back at that, as me not loving or accepting myself enough. I had low self esteem and just felt straight hair is what was pretty.
Im so glad I have a different defintion of what pretty or beautiful is today.
I remember when I was around 6 or 7..my hair was thick, long and “hard to comb” my older cousin did it for me and continued to do it until I was in high school. When she put it in, (the just 4 me with the tape included!!) she would ask me if it was burning yet..and I had to make sure I didn’t scratch the day of the relaxer. Oh the old days!!
I’ve never had a relaxer, ever cause I have ‘good hair’. I’ve asked about it, though — I was 12 or 13 and my hair was going through a funny stage. And people told me my hair would fall out if I apply a relaxer to it. I’m so glad they told me that!
I was 9. Me, my mom and sis all had long healthy hair. My mom and us four kids along with her boyfriend and his three kids all moved in together. That saddled my mom with FIVE natural heads (me, my sis, my mom and her boyfriend’s two daughters)to take care of and plus she was working all day too. It was too much. This was back in the summer of 1970.
We moved into a new neighborhood and lived next door to two girls who were close to our ages and they were sporting perms. I remember wishing I had one too. Little did I know I was about to get my wish.
Turns out, our new friends had a sister that was a beautician. So I went next door to get my hair done. I remember she put the relaxer creme in my hair and told me to tell her when it started burning. It did so really quickly but she didn’t want to take it out, but she did. Apparently that was long enough to get it straight enough.
I was so happy I wouldn’t have to get my hair pressed anymore. Now I don’t remember too much more about my hair that summer. But what I do remember is that my mom had not a single clue about how to take care of it. Nor did it even register that getting me a relaxer meant relaxing the new growth every six weeks. She couldn’t afford that. So I never got another another touch up past the initial application.
By Christmas, the brady bunch arrangement had not worked out and our family moved into a different house. I just remember my new growth being thick and my relaxed hair being hard, feeling like straw and very very dry. It was breaking off like crazy. My mom started pressing my roots and gradually cutting off the relaxed ends. By then I was very aware of my hair and how short it was. And shortly after that I was kinda taking care of my own hair too so my hair never, ever reached its former lengths, while my mom and sister, who had NEVER had a chemical on their hair (due to my experience)continued to have long thriving hair. As a result, I spent the rest of my live longing for LONG hair and having unhealty relaxed hair from the age of 23 to 43. Unfortunately, I didn’t find the key to gaining length and having long healthy hair until I was 46 years old.
Now that I’ve got it, long BSL natural hair…I couldn’t be happier! Chemicals will never touch my hair again!
My aunt took me to get my first relaxer when i was 14, 3 days before my first day of HS. i was ecstatic because i wanted straight hair my whole life. My hair was thick, long, and very healthy and most importantly i looked older. I wasn’t afraid to trim my ends like most black women are and only got my touchups in a salon. In less than 5 years, while in college I decided that i looked too stereotypical (guys actually said they can take me home to their grandmother because i was light skin with long hair! SMH) and decided to go natural. in 05 i did the big chop and have thick, long, very healthy, NATURAL HAIR since!
i’d just like to say that i am a little jealous of everyone that can remember their first relaxer. i had to be about 4, because that’s the only school picture i have of me with a puff. [it was perfectly round and sat directly on top of my head…:sigh:]
i was 7 seven when my mother whipped out that package of the infamous “Just for Me.” my mom used to work at a convalescent home and had no time to do my curly/tangled hair, so she relaxed it. am i happy? heck no! but in a sense i am glad she relaxed it because i can add it to my belt of wiseness.i grew up getting a relaxer every 6 weeks (yes every six weeks, sometimes four) never understanding why i got my hair relaxed. the only thing i knew was when moms had a box of that cream it meant it was relaxer time. 11 years before i decided for myself that relaxers were horrid. it took 11 years, but i’m not sad or regretful that i din’t go natural sooner. why should i? all that matters is that i’m natural now! 😀
moms harassed me the first couple months of my transition stage, actually she still harasses me to get a “texturizer.” same shxt ma…lol she doesn’t get that I DO NOT WANT ANY CHEMICALS IN MY HAIR. it’s irritating. but i went natural for me, and natural i shall stay.
I was 9 years old when I got my first relaxer. My mother applied it herself. The point was to make my hair easier to comb since I am prone to tangles and very tender-headed. I will say it served its purpose. My hair didn’t knot up as much after washing and it was easier to comb. I was happy because of this, not necessarily because of how it looked.
However, once I learned to take care of my natural hair I realized that could be easy as well. You just have to treat it differently than straight hair.
I was 13 when I got my first perm. A lot of my friends in school had perms and wore their hair straight, and I wanted to do so also. I started asking my mother when I was 11, but she made me wait until I was 13. I got it at the end of the eight grade school year, just in time for prom. Before then I would always wear my hair in braids and braided extenstions that my mother had done herself. When it was done I was really happy. I remember the next day when I went to school, one of my friends saw my hair and asked me if i permed my hair. I replied yes w. a big smile on my face and she noooo your hair was nice without the perm. Looking back I can understand why, my fried got a perm when she was younger and had a head full of long thick hair, at the time that she told me i shouldnt have gotten a perm, it was a shorter damaged bob.
I was 11 yrs old and it was for my communion–I found it to be an adventure the only time I was angry was when my mother decided to use my aunt’s beautician and that’s when the back of my hair fell out and I had to go to school like that–I was not happy at all. Rocking a hairstyle that didn’t come out until the late 80’s was not cool.
I was 11. My mom told me she wouldn’t have to do my hair in the morning and that I would be able to do my own hair but I was just one of those girls who had long hair but only did ponytails anyway…
I had no idea of what a relaxer was really about or the concept. I do remember the first day at school I got a lot of attention on my hair. It looked longer and stretched out. even my teacher who was white said she liked it. It wasn’t until college I learned relaxers are something we don’t “have” to get.
btw did anyone ever sometimes feel nauseous or have a headache after they got a relaxer ?
I remember that from when when I was in my early teens and I was told that’s normal to happen but it’s alright
FOUR YEARS OLD! I never remembered having natural hair consequently. I grew up in fear on my nappy hair appearing and was so happy after I had my perm (not during of course…the experience was always TORTOROUS…the burning, the scabs). I was so glad to be done with perms when I went natural. No money spent on upkeep, no more pain. Now i get to enjoy my natural curls and kinks. I love my hair!
The first time I permed my hair I was 16 yrs old. It was a decision I chose to make. My mom never wanted me to perm it in the first place. You see, my mother is white, native indian and black, so therefore, with her gorgeous hair, I to have the same. But, growing up around mostly white people and seeing their straight hair blowing in the wind, made me feel that that was the way to go AND my mother wasn’t doing my hair for me anymore. So, for my 16th birthday my dad took me to the States and while we were out there, he took me to get hair permed in a salon in New York.
I permed my hair one time a yr after that(for some reason I didnt have to perm it the regualr amount of times it’s supposed to be done). Getting closer to the 4 yrs margin, I did have to perm my hair a little more often. My hair had started breaking and I started to miss my fight curls and thick hair. So, at the age of 20 I stopped perming it. I tried to get the parts that had broken off back to normal on my own, but that didn’t work, so at 24 I decided to start going to a salon. Now 1 yr later, its back to the way it used to be.
The only person I was angry at up until last yr, was myself. My mother had always told me, “Don’t perm your hair, you’re going to regret it!” I chose not to listen to her, and like a mother always is, she was right!
But thankfully, my hair is back to its normal, although it’s alot of work to maintain, I love every bit of it.
I was 13. I think it was just that she thought I was old enough to take care of my hair on my own without her or my sisters plaiting it every couple nights. She was dead wrong and I wished I had my hair back in natural plaits.
I think I’ve hated relaxed since then.
I already posted about myself, but I just wanted to say that my daughter has BSL hair and it is extremely thick with several textures in it. I would never perm it and will not let her do it until she is over 18, if that is her choice. Sometimes it takes over 6 hours to shampoo, dry, and style her hair but I would never make her sacrifice for my convenience. I will definitely show her this website from now on so that she can celebrate the beauty that is her natural hair.
I know that I was in 8th grade when I got my first relaxer. My father had my hair cut and a curl put in my hair, yes a curl, when I went to sixth grade (’92) and I was DYING to have something different and up to date. My sister advised me on it and I did it myself. I have wanted to go natural since I became an adult, but it is so difficult with my job (Army); our headgear is unforgiveable. I go as long as possible between perms and am counting down until I will be free to wear my hair as I please. I love this website, I will be an expert when my time finally comes.
I was 5 years old and I remember crying and begging my mother to wash it out. It was Just For Me and it broke all my hair off in the back. I am still self conscientious about the back of my head, smh. I wish I never had, one but I think I hated the straighten comb just as much.
Before we moved down south, I didn’t even know what a relaxer was. I couldn’t understand why some black girls had straight hair but I didn’t.
I got my first relaxer at 12; the end of the first month of 7th grade. My Gramma is a beautician and she had been doing our hair for about a year. She convinced my little sister to let her relax her hair (she was 8 at the time). I guess she wanted to kill two birds with one stone because she relaxed my hair the next day. I agreed to it because she said something to the tune of “it’s just like pressing except your hair stays straight when it gets wet.” My hair was probably a little past BSL then.
Everybody ranted and raved about how nice my hair was. But like someone upthread said, I was a geek and I couldn’t handle the attention my hair drew so I pulled it back into a ponytail everyday. By the end of the school year my hair had broken off to APL. It got shorter and shorter through out high school, though some of that was because I cut it.
I’m not mad at my Gramma for relaxing my hair. It’s kind of ironic that she’s going natural now! lol
South Loop Socialite: you had some beautiful chows. I had one like the brown one on the left. RIP Heidi 🙁
I didn’t have one prior to the first grade, but I know that in my first grade class pictures my hair is long but super thin – so I had to have gotten my first relaxer at around 6.
Now it seems outrageous and like what the f was my mom thinking, but at the time I remember her telling me my hair would look pretty and straight so I was all for it.
I kept that attitude up until I got into high school. I would feel my new growth come in and I always liked the texture and I just really wanted to know how my real hair looked. I was kind of mad at my mom for making that decision for me (she claimed I had too much hair for her to deal with), because I knew that it was going to take balls and a lot of time to get the hair that I had in pre-school back.
I was 5 when I got my first relaxer and I don’t remember anything about it. The only evidence of it is my kindergarten picture: I look like I’d gotten caught out in the rain. It was flat and greasy and VERY short because the relaxer basically broke it all off.
I didn’t get another relaxer until I was 12 and entering middle school. I don’t really remember having an opinion about it either…it was a decision my mother just made for me. I was such a geek back then and hair wasn’t that big of a deal (at least not at that point). Well, just as was the case when I was 5, the relaxer broke most of my hair off. My 7th grade picture shows the proof. But this time around I just kept getting the crack because “that’s what young ladies with this hair do.”
I’m long past holding grudges against my mom for her parenting choices BUT I wish she’d known just a little more about hair care. Her hair’s been short all her life and when I think about what she used to do to it, and how I basically followed her example because I had no other, it makes SO much sense. She’s been wearing a TWA for 20 years. If she ever gets around my dad’s objections to long nappy hair and starts Sisterlocks, she might actually have long hair in her 70s for the first time ever. (Interestingly, he doesn’t have a problem with his daughters’ long nappy hair.)
My mom gave me my first relaxer at age 6, I think. I had this huge “unruly” afro (thanks, dad) that did not fit in with our hectic single mom lifestyle.
Long story short nearly all my hair felt out. All of it broke off.
I don’t blame her, she didn’t know any better. She had even used one of those “kiddie perms”.
I didn’t know any better either, and continued to relax my hair until this year, at 17.
Never ever going back ever nooo you canNOT make me.
Death before relaxer, I say.
I was 13. I had been begging my mom for years to relax my hair, because all of my friends had relaxed hair. She kept telling me no, because she said I wouldn’t take proper care of it and then I’d have no hair. So finally, for my 13th birthday, she took me to a Dominican salon in Harlem where her secretary used to get her hair done and they put Fabu-laxer in my hair. I remember being absolutely APPALLED at how much it burned. I sat there crying and this older woman rubbed my hand and told me it would be ok, that I would love my hair when it was done. I had washed my hair the night before because it had been pressed and I wanted to get it back to its natural state prior to the perm. My freshly washed scalp was NOT feeling that sodium hydroxide in the least. When I left the salon, I had a lingering headache and scabs all over my head, but I was in love with my soft, straight hair. After that, I would avoid relaxing for as long as possible– up to four months. So it’s now fourteen years later and I just made the decision to stop relaxing. Wish me luck!
I was 9 and I begged my mom for the relaxer. I only had it done every 4 months and mostly wore my hair braided. I around the age of 12 I started getting it done every 2 months and wearing it straight.
I was in preschool, so 4 or 5 years old. My mom had her friend put a relaxer in my hair. I remember screaming and crying with snot bubbles coming from my nose because my head was on fire. My mothers friend finally ask her what she did to my hair the night before and my mom confessed to scratch my scalp to remove dandruff. Mom didn’t know better at the time. My mother’s friend replied “poor baby! No wonder she’s screaming.” Needless to say it was horrific. But still, 13 years later, I had my hair relaxed. I’ve been chemical free about a year and a half.
I got my first relaxer at 14. I begged my mom for it. A neighbor of ours put it in for me. I loved how long/stretched out my hair was. I got my last relaxer at 22. I haven’t looked back since!
I was 5 when I got my first relaxer, for picture day:) My natural hair (what I can recall) wasn’t very hard to “manage”. It was wiry, somewhat thin, wispy, and soft. I don’t know why I got a relaxer but I sure didn’t need it for my fragile strands. I don’t resent my mother so much for making hair choices for me as a child. She was a first time mother doing what she thought all AA mothers did. In fact, I was doing her hair at 8 years old! I can only feel the tinge of resentment when she looks at my natural fro now and shakes her head in disgust, wonder, and misunderstanding. I feel she thinks she’s “invested” so much into my hair as a youth and I have just thrown it all away.
@NapturallyHappy, I TOTALLY feel you!! My mom’s from Guyana, born to a black mother and Indian father and my black cousin’s sit around gushing about my hair and how I’m a “coolie girl” and all that and it just makes me feel awkward and sick to my stomach.
Whenever people comment, “I LOVE your hair! You must be mixed…” I always wish, for a second, that the answer was “No.”
Also, with all these hair blogs and great natural hair care information going around, does anyone else notice that very few naturals have “bad and nappy” hair nowadays? And the ones that do stop once a friend hooks them up? So this whole “bad and nappy black hair” thing is misinformation? And we all have beautiful hair, we just can’t use a white girl’s hair regimen cuz that makes our hair “bad and nappy?”
Interesting observation I made a while ago.
I wanted to add, I feel Jessie further up. I grew up in Vermont, and all of my friends and classmates were white. I wanted to look like the little white girls with the long, flowing hair. I never had long flowing hair, or anything close to it. But I can understand the many reasons why my mother chose to relax my hair at such an early age. It was hard enough being the only black child everywhere I went. It would have been even worse for me to be the only black child and nappy on top of that!
I was five when I got my first relaxer. However, my hair didn’t start noticably thinning until I was eleven or so.
BajanPrincess, I’m not angry with my mother. I’m angry with the societal norms that made little black girls feel like less if their hair/noses/skin didn’t meet the standard. A lot of people talk about the Caribbean like some utopia where everyone is made to feel beautiful and where your natural looks/locks are celebrated. That’s such bull. I think the Caribbean is so freakin color-concious, hair-concious that it’s sickening. Things have been changing in recent years, but when I was growing up, adults around me made it very clear who was favored – light-skin, long hair, thin noses. It sounds so ridiculous now, but it was a reality growing up. Sick thing is I found out later in life, from old classmates, that they envied my hair. I was shocked. I wish I’d seen the beauty in my natural hair then. I would never have permed and my mom would have been ok with that decision. She really only permed because we wanted it so badly and, at the time, it was normal.
Growing up, I was never told that either I or my hair was beautiful by any of the women in my family. There are a lot of mixed people in my country and all of the mixed girls I knew were told all the time how pretty they were and what pretty hair they had. They got all of the attention from boys, teachers, everyone. I think I paid too much attention to all of that and felt left out. My first perm stretched my hair well past the middle of my back and I think I felt beautiful for the first time.
If I could go back now, chemicals would never have touched my hair. I’ve cut off just over 2 1/2 feet of hair in the last 10 years alone. Makes me sick. I’ve been natural a while now, but I’ve really only truly learned to care for my hair in the last 2 or so years. I know it’s just hair and it’s not all about the length, but thinking about what you lost due to ignorance about what you had is incredibly sad.
I was 5.
I remember the ladies in my family talking about something big that had to do with me, but I didn’t really understand what was going on.
I don’t remember the reasons. It all seemed like a big deal. I don’t even remember understanding that my hair had changed. Ages 1-5 didn’t really bring much understanding of hair, so I didn’t get what had happened. As I got a little older, I just came to understand relaxers as necessary. How many times did I hear (or say to myself) “You need a perm”? It never even occurred to me that one would not wear a relaxer. What else was there?
I don’t feel upset about it. It was the norm. It was all they knew. My mom’s hair barely waves, let alone “kinks”, but she perms faithfully. I was more upset about the family backlash at my decision to go natural. That’s more where the emotions come into play.
I received my first relaxer at the age of 10. I had very good hair dressers at home, so the most discomfort I ever had was a little itching (after which my hair would be immediately rinsed). Though I love my hair now, with all the activity and sweat of my teen years having a relaxer at the time was a great option. I had A LOT of hair and the relaxer allowed me to be more independent and I was able to keep my hair looking nice on my own. I actually think my mom decided on relaxing my hair because I was gelling my natural hair to DEATH! I didn’t have the resources back then that exist now. There were no talks of conditioner washes, no BGLH.
I don’t have any ill feelings towards my mom for relaxing my hair. Having a relaxer was great! My reasons for loving it when I had it are the same as me loving my natural hair now: freedom! Now it’s no more running to the salon for touch-ups and, funny enough, when I flat iron my hair now, it actually looks even better than it did when I had a relaxer. I’m planning to work in international health and I don’t want to be worrying about new growth when out of the country. (Both summers I spent abroad during college were followed by MAJOR trims when I got back.)
To anyone who has ill feelings toward their mothers, I would say give the old ladies a break. Black women have been relaxing their hair for so long it’s just become part of our culture. We pierce the ears of babies, we relax our hair. It’s nothing personal. My mom didn’t relax my hair because she has race issues; it was for convenience and to stop me from further damaging my hair with that daggon’ black gel- and it worked! Whatever your mom’s mentality, I am 99% sure that at the time she was doing what she thought was best for you. And you should appreciate that.
And for those of you who have family or friends who give you flack, I sympathize with you. Last week I had to tell my black male boss that my hair is so big “because I’m black and this is how my hair grows out of my head.” Would definitely be annoying to have to deal with that at home.
I was 10 or 11 when mom relaxed ly hair.
I was so happy to have straight hair and long hair like my white friends at school.
BajanPrincess, I was the same way. I kept asking my mom for one, but she refused for the same reason. Now I know she was right. Imagine that.
I was 13 or 14 and demanded it for a long time before my mother reluctantly took me to the salon. It took about an hour and a half to relax my hair since it would simply not process. I loved it even though it was breaking immediately. My hair colour is very black and the relaxer seemed to make it look super black and I loved that too.
My mother said I looked like a wet dog with slicked back hair but I was happy passing that fine toothed comb through with ease and swinging my newly straightened hair lol.
I never got a relaxer, thank God, but had always asked my mom for one. She would tell me that a relaxer would make my hair fall out, and I would stop asking for a while.
Do/did any of you discuss the feelings that you have/had (I see some of you said you were/are angry) with your mothers? Do they feel any remorse or regret for perming your hair?
i really don`t know. i didn`t remember a time that i didn`t have a perm other than when i went natural. my mom did keep my hair out of a relaxer for a very long time though…almost a year & i remember my hair getting so long. i do have memories of my mother relaxing my hair when i was about 4. she used just for me, but i don`t know if it was the first time. so, i relaxed my hair for almost 15 years. my hair was damage by me doing my own perms, but mostly, it just stayed at the same length for SOOO long! that whole easier to manage thing to me is such BS! it makes me angry that so many people are so ignorant. well anyways, it`ll be a year in January that i`ve been natural, so congrats to me! 😀
I was about 7 and it was the “Just for Me” relaxer that came with the cassette tape instructions. My mom did it and it turned out ok, from the pictures I have. She always did my hair then, and she does my hair sometimes now (when I ask nicely of course!) Even though I’m 23 I still ask her to do my hair cause it brings back memories and we keep our bond strong that way too.
I got my first press at 9 or 10 and my first relaxer at 11. I remember being really excited to get my hair relaxed. It was this really important rite of passage and I wanted that sleek, straight hair. My father was totally against us getting our hair permed, but my mom took us anyway. I get angry about it now. I feel like little black girls were done such an injustice. We were cheated out of the joy of of celebrating one of our most important characteristics. When I think back to how closely-tied my hair and my self perception were, it’s no wonder I felt like an ugly growing up. It didn’t help that I grew up in a Caribbean nation where mixed girls with long, wavy hair were admired and celebrated and their hair held as the standard. I truly think that had I been taught to appreciate the absolutely beautiful hair that was growing out of my scalp, I would have felt so differently about myself. Such a sad legacy given to us. I’m happy we’re taking it back.
My mom did my first relaxer when I was 10. My mom did all of my relaxers, save one. I was excited because the plan was that it would make my hair much easier to manage. (Psssssyyyyccccchhh!!!!) I played with my hair hardcore, I put rollers in it, clips, and all sorts of nonsense. It was exciting for a while because it was new to me and people at school liked it.
Then my hair started to get brittle and break no matter what I put in it.
Cut to 12 years of hair frustration. To think I could have had healthy hair and put in so much less (wo)man-hours all this time.
I think I was about 7 or 8 years old when I got my first relaxer. I remember being sooo excited to be free of the pressing comb but little did I know my hair would fall like leaves in October. Seriously the only thing that saved my hair was going natural.
I got my first relaxer the day before I turned 15 as a birthday present. It was not what I really wanted. I begged my mom to let me lock my hair back then but she is an old fashioned Caribbean woman. Locks were frowned upon. Because I was desperate to do something other than my braids and twists I just went ahead and got my hair relaxed.
First off, wow! I can’t believe you guys used my pic again!! It’s actually one of my favorite pics from my childhood. I got my first relaxer about 2 years after this photo was taken. I loved being a little girl with long hair. lol… but if I could go back in time I would’ve asked my mom to never go down that road. I wasn’t someone that dreaded getting my hair done when I was younger but I definitely remember trying to “fight” the burning sensation of the relaxer so it could get super straight. lol Maybe that’s what has built up my pain threshold so much.
Ishea
Honestly I’m not sure when, I would get a perm maybe once a year but my mom kept braids in my hair. The perm never would take though it used to burn so bad I would cry when it came to “perm day”. I spent most of my life in braids, when she finally let the beautician *i guess they talked her into it* consistently perming my hair every 2 months, it went from mid back to shoulder length. I am not sure my age, ….man I want to say 8 or 12 when that happened. Possibly 12!
WOOOWW! this is my first comment because I just found this site(which I Now LOVE!)
I recieved my first relaxer at 4. my aunt did it becuase my mother doesnt know how to do hair(even her own.. which is why she has locks for the past 10 years).I know i didn’t sit still becuase I never sat still even as a freshman in college I would alwyas jumo when it burns or shake through the pain. I did te BC about 2 months ago & now I notice how fast my hair has grown. & i love every second of it! just need to figure out what products to use for my hair.
The crazy thing about this is I actually don’t remember when I got a relaxer. I believe I was in middle school though, maybe the 7th grade.
Actually, I’ve never had a relaxer in my hair, praise God!
I was about 13 when I got my first relaxer. I begged my mom, she was skeptical but agreed to put a mild one in my hair. U regretted it since. My relaxer life lasted from the age of 13 until 20 y.o. consisted of scabs on my scalp, horrible breakage and costly, LOOOONG hours at the hair dresser.
Stopped relaxing and never looked back.
I was 9 when my mom took me to the salon to get my relaxer. I had really thick, long hair that tangled easily. I seriously remember 3 different people trying to comb out my hair so they could put creamy crack on it…
And when it was done, I remember have a super straight, long high ponytail. I never thought my hair could ever get like that.
Then when I turned 14, I realized my hair was thinning a bit. Which is ridiculous because my hair is really thick.
Been relaxer free since 16. 🙂