She saw a group of neighborhood children playing, walked over to them and snatched the hat off. Janet,'' they said. That was five years ago. Today, Givens keeps her eyelashes longer than the hair atop her head. Shaving her head, she said, freed her from wayward thinking on issues of beauty and acceptance.
Naps are the tightly coiled, curly kinks that grow from the heads of black folks.
For hundreds of years, said Taalib-din Uqdah, president of the American Hairbraiders and Natural Haircare Association, they were a source of shame. In the cotton fields, enslaved black women kept their kinks covered with rags. Later, soap, goose fat and other heavy oils were used to soften, straighten and change the texture of black hair. In 1905, the hot iron came along as a way to straighten the thick, coarse manes of black women. That meant those things closest to the white culture light skin, narrow features and long, straight, nap-free hair were most acceptable.