Before I get to discussing the title of this post, I just wanted to catch up a bit.
I went to an opening of a new book release on Friday night. A friend of a friend has a few pictures published in it. The title of the book is called “Infinite Instances: Studies and Images of Time” and it’s purpose was to meld science and art in a study about time. It’s a rather academic book, so most people won’t be that interested, but I’m excited that my friend of a friend’s contributions were published. Some info about the book is here:
http://www.dexigner.com/directory/detail/18735.html
And the pictures that appear in the book are here:
http://catrutgers.com/archetime.html
Awesome, eh?
Yesterday morning, I took Hazel to the vet for her followup after her surgery. That cone that she had to wear for two weeks is history, as the surgical incision has healed. She hated that thing. She’d scratch and grab it, trying to tear it off. She still can’t blink her right eye though, so I still have to continue giving her the eye lubricant. The jury’s still out on whether Hazel will ever regain that function, but it’s a minor concern relative to the tumor. She has been deemed cured of the tumor so it’s sweet news.
I also went to the DUMBO Arts Festival in the afternoon. In this case, DUMBO is not the Disney character, it’s a neighborhood. It’s an acronym that stands for “Down Under the Manhattan Bridge.” When I was growing up, there wasn’t much there but abandoned factories and storefronts, but it’s been built up in the last decade. The festival itself was pretty nice. One cool exhibit had magnets of different things on a glass table-a trumpet, a car, a train, etc. If you moved the magnet around, you could hear sounds corresponding to the object coming from a speaker. So if you moved the magnet of a trumpet around, you could hear an actual trumpet blowing. I can imagine that kids would have a ball with it. I had organized the outing as a Meetup event, but out of nine people who rsvp’d, only one showed up and she had to leave within 90 minutes. There were a couple of other exhibits that I had wanted to see after she left, so I just saw them alone and left around 45 minutes later. Most of the no shows didn’t bother informing me of their change in plans, even though I usually give out my cell phone number within 2 hours of the scheduled event time. This wasn’t the first time I’d scheduled events for this particular group only to have no one show up or just one person. There’s no way that there can be a vibrant group without willing participants and if people aren’t willing, why should I waste my time? I was fed up enough to send an e-mail after I got home informing the group that I would be charging a nominal fee for all events going forward in an attempt to cut down on flakiness and to announce that if people no-show for three events, they’d be removed from the group. A few people have already left the group, which I knew would happen. I really don’t care, because they aren’t the type of people I want in the group anyway.
So, on to the discussion of what the title means. Over the last couple of days, the online natural hair community has been buzzing over a series of videos on the website Type F, which is endorsed by Tyra Banks. The videos that I’ve posted below have to be the worst I’ve ever seen in reference to natural hair care. And these aren’t the only ones, either. These are just a sample of the wretchedness that’s out there. There’s a lot more of them where they came from.
What totally astounds me about these videos is that, first of all, Joann’s hair is totally jacked up. It’s extremely dry, damaged and tangled up. It needs deep conditioning and detangling with the quickness. If someone is going to make videos giving tips on hair care, their hair should at least be presentable. My jaw was practically on the floor when I was watching these. There is absolutely no information whatsoever about even the basics of natural hair care, which is namely, moisturizing, sealing the moisture in your hair with an oil and butter and protecting the integrity of natural hair. In the video where she’s blow drying her hair, there’s no mention of using the blow dryer at a low setting at all. There’s also no mention of using a heat protectant. Blow drying is basically using direct heat on your strands and without a heat protectant and using the blow dryer on low or cool, you will damage your hair. In the video about ” laying your afro down,” she runs a paddle brush through her DRY highly textured hair. You can hear the strands crackle and pop while she’s brushing them. One of the first things you learn as a new natural is that you NEVER comb or brush your hair while it is bone dry as it causes breakage. The fact that Joann did not moisturize and seal her hair with something before using that brush is criminal. The funniest thing of all is that she mentions that she’s a licensed hair stylist in all the videos. I don’t know where she got that license from, but it needs to be revoked. How hard could it have been for Tyra and her people to vet this woman before they shot and uploaded these videos? I’m concerned that new naturals will stumble upon these videos and take Joann’s advice since she’s supposedly a professional. I will guarantee that if anyone took her advice, they’d be bald. Those natural hair videos aren’t the only ones on Type F. There are makeup videos, videos on caring for relaxed hair, wavy hair and more loosely textured curly hair. I haven’t seen them, but those who have state that they aren’t much better. There are dozens of bloggers and vloggers on You Tube who give better tips than anyone on Type F. Tyra should have consulted them. I am not a licensed hair stylist and I am no expert by any means, even after two years of being fully natural, but I can assure you that my hair is in better shape than Joann’s.
My hair for the past week:
Incidentally, as per Cass’s blog, Type F did put out a statement early this morning advising that they were thanking all those who took the time to voice their concerns on the website and that they would be removing the videos. They did disable the playlist for the natural hair videos, but if you do a search for them, they are still there as of this writing. We’ll see how that plays out.
confessionsofladyv69 