Subtle Discrimination (People with Curly Hair, Our Time Is Now!)

Note: I really wish I could write on here more than what I do. With school, it has been hard to write at least once a week. I will hopefully write more someday... even if that someday doesn't come until summer.


Another Note: I may possibly be starting a mini-blog series on here, or I may just start a separate blog if I have time to do either one of those options. The reason? I have asked my friend, Nick Wright, to help me build a healthier lifestyle by eating better and exercising more. I am even going to start lifting weights, and I don't just mean curls with little weights, I mean I am going to bench (at least this is what Nick says). Anyway, I was going to call it "Getting Right with Nick Wright" because I thought it sounded clever. Nick wasn't too big of a fan of the name, so I have to think of something different. I also want Nick to start blogging. I think it would be cool. I'm rambling... moving on.


One More Note: I dyed my hair black. Therefore, do not be alarmed when you see that my drawings of me now have black hair. I will probably ask Alycia to take new pictures for my banner once it gets warmer outside. By the way, she took the ones in my banner right now, and she does a good job. Check out her stuff at Bellezzia Photography. In the mean time, I will show you guys the new hair with pictures that have yet to be released anywhere else (and by anywhere else, I mean Facebook).

~*ACTUAL BLOG TIME*~

I've always heard about how girls in days long ago were considered blessed if they had curls. Along with that, paleness was also a positive thing. I'm not sure why. I think maybe it was because it was a sign that you didn't have to do outside labor and your family was wealthy. If all of this was true, I would have been the Paris Hilton and Megan Fox of the time! I also imagine that I would be wearing a vintage dress.

Alas, a drastic change occurred. Girls wear jeans now. Tanning is so desired that the sun isn't enough for some people, so they must now use something that resembles a heated coffin. And those girls that possess natural curls are looked at as if we have been cursed... that is if people even look our way at all.

Since about age eleven, I have grown to think something is wrong with my hair because of the rude comments people have made or suggested about curls. I remember even watching The Simpsons Movie and a character in there said, "I wish you didn't have the Devil's curly hair." My friend with me laughed, and then realized he was sitting next to me. He apologized. The funny thing is that when his hair grows out, it's curly. He never lets it grow out though.

I always had people wanting to do my hair in braids or ponytails, almost like they wanted to hide my luscious, yet disgusting, curls. Over time, people have stopped asking so much, so now, I don't really have a problem with people wanting to play with my hair.

Instead, I now have a problem with one thing: people who insist on straightening my hair. It is probably the most insulting thing ever. In fact, you could be having the best day ever and feel so confident with how you look. Then, this little comment can destroy all of that in seconds.

This has been happening to me for a while now. I don't know why it keeps happening. My hair has always been so thick and curly that straightening it is a horrendous task. It frizzes and expands into an all consuming monster because of the thickness. I bet now with my black hair, if my hair were to be straightened, I would look like Bill Kaulitz, the lead singer of Tokio Hotel.

source for picture of Bill Kaulitz: MTV

My friends growing up always had a difficult time straightening my hair too. Their arms would get tired, my hair would get too hot and burn them, my hair would get too hot and burn me, they would burn my ear, it took like two hours... you get the idea. One of my friends bought me a straightener for my birthday when I was in junior high. It was a Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen flat iron. She did this so I could straighten my hair on my own. Like I could do that with a cheap, plastic flat iron that took ten minutes to fray and frizz one strand of hair. I'm sorry I don't have the patience to wake up four hours earlier or take four hours out of my night just to do my hair in a manner that makes my hair look like I ruined it.

I did, however, want straight hair because it seemed like everyone hated my curls. I had tried everything. I did this curl relaxer thing that was supposed to straighten your hair permanently according to a lot of people, but as soon as water touched my hair, it was as springy as ever. Not to mention, while it was straight, it was so frizzy that I am pretty sure it had its own atmosphere.

When I was visiting a mall in Nashville when I was fifteen, I had an interesting experience. A lady at a kiosk asked me to come over so she could demonstrate how powerful her flat iron was. I was slightly embarrassed at this, but I went over anyway because I knew that society expected me to rid my curls at any given chance. She took her sleek flat iron to a strand of my oh-so-unmanageable hair, and much to my surprise, it was straight and smooth within one attempt. It was beautiful. I was enamored by the straightener. I instantly wanted it because I knew it would ease my pain and suffering. The lady then told me the straightener cost $200. Being a fifteen-year-old with any common sense, I knew even if I had that much money I wouldn't be spending it on a straightener. I announced this to her, and she disposed of me quicker than a napkin containing a killed bug. The only problem was I had to walk around the mall with one strand of straight hair amongst my curls.

I realize that a lot of people wanting to straighten my hair may not even realize what they are doing, so I feel like I have no right to be mad. However, I wish people would give consideration to what they are saying. It is like being told I am not good enough on a personal level. I don't go up to people asking if I could curl their hair (and this could have to do something with the fact that I have NO idea how to curl hair since mine naturally does it). Seriously though, it's like telling me my eye color isn't good enough. This is something I was born with, so why does everyone want to change it?

Today, I don't really care too much about wanting straight hair. Sure, there was a time in my life where I refused to wear my hair down, but now I wear it down proudly. In fact, I HATE wearing my hair any other way. My challenge for you, dear reader, is to look at the messages you may not even be aware that you are sending that could really make someone feel like they aren't good enough. More importantly, I challenge you to be comfortable with who you are and the person God made you to be. Have I made it completely to that point? Not completely, but it is a daily process. It is a choice to not fall into a lie of believing something is wrong with you.

I want to say if you straighten your hair and you like it that way, more power to you, but I hope you are doing it for you and no one else. You are beautiful no matter if your hair is straight, wavy, curly, braided, in dreadlocks, in a mohawk, or gone.

With that, I conclude this blog with pictures of my hair in it's normal state of curliness.

The Number One Cause of Depression is Laundry

I could kill Eve for many reasons. She had to eat that stupid fruit from the forbidden tree, and we all became sinful creatures. Yeah, the land became hard to cultivate, child birth became painful, and death entered the world. However, we overlook ONE important thing. Before sin, we were naked! Before sin, we didn't have to wear clothes! Before sin, we didn't have the punishment of doing laundry! I bet this thought crossed Eve's mind. I bet she tried to beg God for a different fate.

Obviously, Eve didn't win, and therefore, the human race is still today being condemned to a horrid fate of doing laundry.

I really hate doing laundry. It is probably my least favorite thing in the world. Most people would argue that laundry is not that bad, and those people have obviously never lived on a college campus where doing laundry is like being sentenced to lethal injection. I thought doing laundry was bad when I was living in the dorms because having to share the washers and dryers with eighty other girls usually guaranteed self-loathing and hatred when all of the washers and dryers were occupied. Now that I live in an on-campus apartment, I would compare dorm laundry to getting a filling and apartment laundry during the winter to lethal injection. Let me illustrate to you why this task is so torturous. 

As you can see, the place where I do my laundry is very difficult to reach with the icy sidewalks and courtyard of death. You may be wondering what makes the courtyard of death so deathly. I will show you with another illustration.

Mix all of this with the insanely cold temperature, and you will understand why I avoid doing laundry as long as I can. Please don't read that and think I'm some unclean person. When I say I avoid doing laundry, I am smart and hygienic about it. When I run out of clothes, the obvious solution is to wear something that didn't get TOO dirty over again. After I can't do that again, the next obvious solution is to borrow clothes from friends or go out and buy some (the second option is rare since I am a broke college student). However, this method does not work for long because I can't keep borrowing and buying. Plus, those clothes just add to the amount of laundry I will soon have to do. I can practically hear my clothes hamper whimpering as I watch it get fuller and fuller.

The time comes where my hamper explodes all over my room, and I realize that I should probably do laundry. At this point, I want to punch myself in the face for letting my laundry accumulate so much that I have to end up taking multiple trips through the courtyard of death and/or icy sidewalks. I'm so angry that this is going to take longer than it should if I would have just done my laundry in the first place, but it seems that EVERY little thing is going to make this a longer process than what it needs to be.

By the power of God and His divine intervention, the clothes eventually finish drying. However, now I have a whole bunch of clothes that I need to hang, return to friends, and/or fold. This usually overwhelms me because I am tired of doing laundry, so I just leave the clothes like they are for a few days. Finally the obnoxious pile of clothes causes me to break down, and I start to fold them. By this point, everything is all wrinkly, and once again, I go into a downward spiral of anger towards myself for doing this. Once I have finally gained a sliver of self-respect, I spend an hour putting away all of the clothes.

The thing about laundry is that you never win. There is always more laundry to do, and that thought depresses me. I previously mentioned strategies that I have tried to avoid laundry, and they have all backfired. However now, I have one plan that is sure to work. It is a plan so simple that the only reason it hasn't happened yet is because it is so revolutionary. The one way we can defeat laundry once and for all:

BE NAKED!

The Two Week Dog: The Story of Fido

I never had a dog growing up. Well, I suppose that is not entirely true. When I was a baby, we had an Old English Sheepdog named Buffy. Apparently, I was very abusive to this dog, but Buffy loved me and guarded me like I was the ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz. I am not sure what happened to Buffy. We may have given her away, she may have died from natural causes, or I could have ran her over one too many times with my baby walker. All I know is, she was gone before I was old enough to remember her.

When I was a little older, my uncle brought home a Chow that he was claiming as his, but he was more than willing to let me play with it. He named him Bruno. At first, Bruno was a fun dog, but he soon became as vicious as his name. One day when I was trying to go play with Bruno, he snapped at me. I am not entirely sure why. It could have had something to do with me spitting my strawberry milkshake on him whenever I found chunks of strawberry in it. Whatever the reason, I was not allowed to play with him anymore, and I still have a resentment towards Chows.

Around some time in middle school, I finally had the chance to own a dog. My grandpa had stumbled across an abandoned puppy. Being the good man that he was, he decided to bring it home to AT LEAST find someone who could care for it. He tried to keep the fact that there was a puppy on the premises a secret because he knew I would be more than willing to volunteer for the position of caring for it. Little did my grandfather know about my "puppy radar" that I still possess today. Basically puppy radar is me sensing a puppy's presence, finding said puppy, losing all self-control, and acting like a gorilla on speed for the next twenty minutes. Needless to say, after the puppy radar went off, I decided to argue a convincing case of why we should keep the puppy in the most logical way my ten-year-old self with hippie hair knew how.

My argument eventually won, and I had my very own dog. Grandpa named him Fido. Yes, I must include that my grandfather named him, and I didn't. I would never pick such a ludicrous name for a dog. I would have picked something more like Lintu which is Finnish for "bird" because of the irony.

Fido and I lived happily together for approximately two weeks. I have no idea what kind of dog he was. I'm going to assume he was a Labrador Retriever, but I am not sure. It didn't matter though because we had so much fun. He was an amazing puppy, even though he didn't do much. My friends and neighbors loved him too.

My grandma is not a big animal fan, and we still had my uncle's Chow living with us. The Chow did not get along with other dogs; therefore, he would snap at Fido if Fido wondered a little too close to him. My family knew that the best option was to give Fido away. It was only fair since the Chow had been there longer (even though we all didn't really like him). The problem was that my grandparents knew I would not let Fido out of my sight, and if they did try to take Fido away, I would throw a temper tantrum that made the kids on SuperNanny look like saints.

Finally, the horrid day came: the opportunity my grandparents had been awaiting. I was outside playing on the trampoline with my little cousin, when I decided to do one of the infamous flips my grandparents and the manufactures of the trampoline warn you not to do. Much to the disapproval of every adult in the world, I had done this flip numerous times and landed successfully. However, today was the day I unfortunately landed wrong and hurt my neck. It wasn't a serious injury, but it hurt bad enough that I could not hold my head up for the rest of the day without it hurting. At lunch, my grandma decided to give me pain medicine and tell me to go lie down. Within minutes, I was fast asleep.

I don't know how I woke up at the moment I did. I'd like to think it was my puppy radar that woke me, but maybe it was the beeping sound of a truck backing up. All I know is I suddenly heard a commotion, and I was pretty sure I heard dogs barking. I stumbled out of bed with my neck hanging down like a person wearing a Chuck E. Cheese costume where they had to tilt the head down because they were too tall to see out of the lower hole and too short to see out of the higher hole (I know this because I worked there for nine months).

By the time I had reached the front door, the truck was driving away with MY dog. I was screaming to not take my dog with my head hung lower than any emo kid could ever dream. I was also slightly woozy from the pain medicine. Oh, and let's not forget the hippie hair! I am sure that it was the saddest sight to ever see.

Despite how pitiful I looked at that moment, the truck did not stop. I was instantly furious with my grandparents, but they couldn't tell due to the fact that I was either looking at the ceiling or the floor for the remainder of the day. Therefore, I decided to do the unconditional sobbing, so I could be sure they heard my heart breaking.

For the next two days, I was pretty sure life could not get worse. I was proven wrong while I sat outside next to our neighbor's mangled fence (it's not mangled in real life, but that day I hated everything) still moping about my puppy being taken out of my hands before he even learned his first trick. That's when I had my first encounter with cruel and unusual punishment.

Yes, my next door neighbors went to the animal shelter/pound/jail that my grandparents disguised with nice names, and they adopted MY puppy. MY FIDO! THEY EVEN KEPT HIS NAME AS FIDO! I was forced to watch my puppy grow up into a beautiful dog from across a fence that in my head resembled prison bars. I know that you're thinking that I should be happy that my dog found a home, and I should be happy I could see him everyday. As I grew older, I did become very appreciative of that. However, as a ten-year-old, I thought that was the biggest stab in the back that my next-door neighbors could do. Therefore, I spent the rest of my middle school years dramatically defeating their daughter at Pokémon. She may have been valedictorian of her class, but she could NEVER outsmart my Blastoise.

With all of this being said, this story is the biggest reason I look forward to having my own rundown apartment after graduating college. I will be able to own a dog. I don't know what type of dog it will be. I just know that she will be named Marzipan, and it will not be a Chow.