Frapunzel

If any one of you has met little F., you might recall that her hair is well, pretty non-existent.

She’s almost 18 months old - next Sunday, WHOO-HOO! - yet her cranium coverage is sparse at best.

Exhibit A - January 2012

At the back it shows some signs of life, but up on front by her forehead? Yeah, not happening.

We had expected this.

Her Mama, aka Moi, didn’t have any hair besides some fuzzy down on her head up until she was about 9 months old. Nothing, zip, nada, zilch. Which given how much and how thick my own parents’ hair was, was a little odd.

The pictures that exist of me as an infant - earliest one is of my baptism at age 7 months - show me as a little baldy with just a soupçon of dark down upon my crown.

But then the next photos of me are at 12 months old...by which time a mess of curls has sprouted from my head and have threatened to take over everything in the land, much like a human version of kudzu.

And I’ve even found a letter from my Mama to my Avó (her Mama) saying how I’ve just suddenly sprouted all this hair at once around the age of 9 months.

So the whole ‘the-parents-have-really-thick-hair-but-the-baby-at-first-has-none’ thing was not a surprise and was indeed expected. I thought that much like what had happened with me, little F. would suddenly sprout a little baby Portuguese Afro before her first birthday.

Except that hasn’t happened.

Exhibit B: July 2013

It’s grown more, yes. But it’s still very scant and scattered.
It does show signs of having some curl, but if it didn’t that wouldn’t be strange seeing as her Papa-in-Training has straight-as-a-rod follicles.

What i didn’t expect though is that others would think she has ‘good’ hair. 

I’ll explain.

We went to our local park this morning with her Vôvô. This is something I’ve been meaning to do for ages, but the horrible heatwave and just generally miserable summer weather has prevented me from doing. Plus honestly I’ve been really tired in the mornings. Like crazy tired. 

But when I checked the weather forecast earlier in the week and saw that today we were due to have some sunny (but not too hot) weather, I thought it’d be a perfect day to pop out for some swings action.

As little F. swung away in utter joy, I got to talking a bit with the mother next to us. Her daughter was about the same age as F. - give or take a few weeks - and she had the most adorable little blonde curls tied up in tiny, for lack of a better word, Afro puffs. We got to talking about hair and how F.’s seemed to be in a state of hibernation and the other mother surprised me by saying ‘Well, at least she’s going to have good hair, unlike mine.’

I immediately said ‘Oh no, she has some curls growing in the back, they’re just combed out right now.’ And then realized that I immediately knew what she meant by ‘good hair’. Good hair is straight, which obviously then implies that curly hair is not ‘good’. 

I told her her baby’s hair was beautiful - ‘cause it was - and was left a bit sad about the curly-bad connotation.

I’ve had curly hair all my life. Not tight curls, although I did wish for them many a time as a child - that to me was the ideal hair :) - but pretty curly. And wavy. 

I’ve never not wanted to have curly hair and can’t recognize myself on the few occasions that my hair has been straightened out at the salon. Other people always seem to like me with straightened hair, but when I look in the mirror all I see is a stranger, or at best me play-acting, so its back to the curls for me.

But I had read in the past about the concept of ‘good hair/bad hair’ which is apparently very prevalent in the African-American population. I had just never encountered it in person yet.

I’m still not sure exactly what kind of hair F. is going to have. It seems pretty dark at the moment (my hair was reddish brown as a child but then became darker as I aged and it’s been (artificially) red since I was about 19, while Papa-in-Training's was straight, thick, and blonde as a baby and is now light brown and straight) and mostly straight with some curls if it gets wet or it’s humid out.

I’d love it if she had dark curly or wavy hair like me, but i’d love it just as much if it turned out to be blondish and straight like her Papa-in-Training’s. Or any combination thereof.

But regardless of what it ends up being, it’ll all be ‘good’ hair, because there’s no such thing as bad hair.