The One Brown Girl Challenge

I think the song is postive, however I do not think it will be engouh to make young girls embrace their hair. I found it interesting that some bloggers mentioned disliking thier hair and it being a process in accepting their hair. There needs to be more images of different types of hair to have a long lasting impact.

Perhaps because after the birth of my fourth child, my hair went berserk and is now curly and kinky and on the frizzy side and my littlest is only 3, so I haven't exactly figured out how to work with my new hair - - have not figured out which products can tame it - I relate. I love Sesame Street for always working so hard to be INCLUSIVE!

Thank you for this post - you might like the post on my Revolution page about my friend Gail - the Everything Good About Film Noir entry!

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Let's start a BeautyRevolution ( http://somuchmorethangoodlooks.tumblr.com/ )!

I love this video! I feel like it will help young girls in accepting their natural hair texture. I just recently decided to embrace my natural hair texture and it has been a year now. I love the ability to go from straight to curly in just minutes.
Yes, we come in all different skin tones, hair textures, and sizes. We as a people have to accept our difference and so will others.

I LOVE MY HAIRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!
I love it, I love it, curly, straight, or fluffy. I love my hair!

lol just my own song
smile.

" Developing Women of Substance and Character"

God's Character Woman

Oh the burdens we carry with us over our hair, eh? At least you've conquered it! Thanks for sharing. =)
( http://www.mylivesignature.com )

I love Willow Smith's song and the Sesame Street remix version too! :::Whipping my locks to the music:::
( http://www.mylivesignature.com )

I grew up in a predominantly white community. There were approximately 5 african american girls in my high school class. I absolutely hated my hair. I hated that it wasn't straight and bouncy like many of my classmates. I hated the maintenance it required and as a result, I releaxed it constantly. At the first sign of any kinkiness, I was at the salon so you can guess how unhealthy and damaged my hair was!

It wasn't until later in lfe that I learned to love my hair. I realized that my hatred of my hair was a reflection of my self esteem. Now, I don't mind that my hair is thick and sometimes kinky. I've even learned to accept finding a stray gray hair ever now and then.

I loved the video and I wish that it was around when I was younger! I am definitely going to show it my daughter! Great topic and thank you for posting it.

Great post. I'm wavy, coarse, myself. But have come to appreciate it with age (and the wisdom that accompanies that).

Thought you'd love, if you haven't yet seen, Willow Smith's 'I Whip My Hair' ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymKLymvwD2U&ob=... )video. It is this very post set to a beat!!

Jo Anna Guerra writes The Adventures of Saia & Chago ( http://saiaandchago.blogspot.com ) and Digressions of a Mad Lesbian ( http://madlesbian.blogspot.com )

Twitter: @joannaguerra ( http://twitter.com/joannaguerra )

Rock on, MommyResource so your 7 year old daughter can rock on too! =)
( http://www.mylivesignature.com )

Don't you just LOVE your hair short?!?!? I've been threatening to cut off my tushy-length dreadlocs for about a month now...so I can go back to my boy short hair I wore for 15 years. I'll have to let you know when I do it. SO glad you love your hair!
( http://www.mylivesignature.com )

I love the versatility of my hair. I am still amazed at how many styles I can "rock" on any given day.

This video was awesome. I showed it to my seven year old daughter she loved the song. She is still singing it and sharing it with her friends.

After two decades of chemical relaxer, flat irons, straightening potions, smoothing lotions and a HUGE time commitment, I went to the salon and said "just cut it off". I love my hair now! I love that I don't have to brush it at all - just my two hands and some leave-in conditioner and I'm good to go. I loved giving up all those potions and appliances. And I LOVE that my kids and my husband can touch my hair now. Great post, and awesome video. Thank you for sharing it with us.

I agree, Peco! Children of all ages AND THEIR PARENTS need to see this video for sure.
You aren't alone with not liking your hair 24/7. That's just a bad hair day. It's when your esteem suffers as a result that creates a problem.
Singing with Peco " I love my haaaiiiiiirrr!" =)
( http://www.mylivesignature.com )

Oh yes, fitness hair (also known as motorcycle hair or convertible hair) is another story entirely. LOL. I run an adventure camp with a multicultural camp experience and I always tell parents they have 3 choices for their kids' hair: Braids, a ponytail, and/or a bandana. One less thing to worry about while they're having so much fun!
How fabulous that your mom is a survivor!!! I've had a life threatening illness scare of my own and it ultimately shows everyone what's REALLY important, doesn't it? Thanks for sharing. =)
( http://www.mylivesignature.com )

Children of all ages need to see this video and know that no matter what type of hair you have its ok. You are beautiful with long, short, wavy, curly and kinky hair.

I have been natural going on 3 years and I must admit it was a challenge making that transition from relaxed hair to my curly kinks. There are times when I don’t like my hair very much because of the time it takes to wash and get it under control BUT after watching this video and the message that it conveys, I LOVE MY HAIR!!!!!..... I am proud of all my curls and kinks in between….

I am so happy that so many of us are embracing ourselves. I am from a family of women with lots of "beautiful" hair. I was once told that my hair was like "spun silk". I'll never forget it. It was simply relaxed hair but the girl who said it to me had short, very coarse hair and I knew where she was coming from. She didn't love her hair.

Fast forward some years, my gorgeous mother, one of the most beautiful women you ever want to see, received a breast cancer diagnosis and eventually lost all her fabulously beautiful hair to chemo treatments. It hurt that we could no longer share our hair rituals. I was sad but she was brave! But my mother was even more beautiful without her hair! Oh God, the inner beauty despite her hairless face. She even tattooed on some eyebrows. Eventually, she stopped wearing wings and started wrapping her bald head in scarves. She was fierce! Seriously, everyone was stunned that she made chemo look so damned good!

Nowadays, my hair is a mess. I still get compliments but I try not to take it to heart. As a triathlete, I just can't keep it "nice" and I don't really care too much. But I know that I've been fortunate to have a bunch of hair in a hair society, so I definitely take it for granted.

The one thing about all this hair is that keeps many African-American women from reaching their full fitness potential. I know many who won't exercise--as much because of it, but that's a whole other story!

Keep it up!
Love,
Kinaya

How absolutely wonderful (!) that you have positive feelings and memories associated with your hair! I have always loved the feelings associated with having loving hands in my hair too, so I can relate completely. =)
( http://www.mylivesignature.com )

I think gray is fab too...just not on me...and not just yet. LOL. Awesome that your daughter is blogging. Curious about your point of view: Is it okay for EVERYONE to use the word nappy?
( http://www.mylivesignature.com )

I have loved my hair short, long, curly, kinky, straight, and everything in between. I have did from ponytails to plaits. I love the thickness and the weight of it. I have been inquired upon many times as to the coloring I put in it and I take great pleasure in saying it is naturally this golden brown mix with a honey sheen. I think the fondest memories I have of my hair come from when I was a girl and on Sundays my mom would take down my hair, wash it and braid it for the week. I had a conversation with a white friend the other day and she said it a common thing for white mothers to cut their daughter's hair short until they are able to do it themselves. I felt sad because hair time is a great source of memories I have with my mom that we still talk about today.... Oh I can still smell the Bergamot and Suave shampoo :)

I'm 44 and looking forward to my gray...I ain't even made. "NAPPY TALK" is a blog that my oldest daughter has been doing for a minute. Educating college students on keeping their hair healthy while on a budget!!!! So like her momma!!

I do think straight hair is beautiful too! In fact, I think it's ALL beautiful!
But I also think women and girls of color have been bombarded with the Straight Hair is the Best Hair thing for about 200 years now. The reason I love this video so much is that it may begin to break that cycle...for adults too! Shoot, if the parents don't love their hair, their children certainly won't.
BTW, I embrace my gray with a bottle of Naturtint from Whole Foods every 6 weeks. LOL.
( http://www.mylivesignature.com )

Quite often, as a white girl, I've admired the fullness and versatility of the hair of my brown-skinned girlfriends. I never got the whole "straight" is good thing. My hair wouldn't hold a curl if its life depended on it. And now it's going gray... should I embrace that??? Blurgh it's tough

So I read this story on NPR called "I Love My Hair": A Father's Tribute to his Daugther. It's the story about how an Italian dad, the head writer at Sesame Street, and his wife adopted an Ethiopian child and they watched her choice of dolls. "She wanted to have long blond hair and straight hair, and she wanted to be able to bounce it around." So he wrote this song for her. Very cool stuff. See http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?story...
( http://www.mylivesignature.com )

I read your blogpost about your relationship with your hair and you must know that I think your hair looks great!
I do understand the whole curly hair thing and finding the right products is always key. Funny how we're never satisfied. Too straight, too curly, too light, too dark, too this, too that. That's how we are as women, aren't we?
I challenge you to love your hair one day at a time. You're beautiful!

( http://www.mylivesignature.com )

I HATE my hair. I actually just wrote a blog about it the other day... I hate that I have let my feelings for my hair sometimes affect my day and my self esteem.

I do love the video though. :)

www.themarthacomplex.blogspot.com ( http://www.themarthacomplex.com )

That's where it starts, doesn't it? At home. Your mom built a foundation that you came to accept as the norm, even while all of the images around you did not promote natural hair. That is AWESOME.
I don't think there is anything wrong with straightening your hair. Self-love is the key at the end of the day. But as you know, there has been this history of bushy, kinky, curly, coarse hair having a stigma attached to it....and so the Sesame Street video is right on point...and right on time for this generation of children.
Still singing: I love my haaaa iiii rrrrr!
( http://www.mylivesignature.com )

I love my hair!

I enjoy the versatility and the low maintenance of my hair. It is part of what makes me uniquely me. I have been natural(chemical free)most of my life and I would not want it any other way. I have teen daughters and they are natural as well. Since they were toddlers I taught them to embrace all of who they were---including their hair---just as my mother did with me.

My mom never complained about our hair (this includes my two sisters).She never taught us that perms would make our hair more "managable"---she was natural too. When either of us decided to perm or straighten our hair she didn't criticize the decision. We tried it, we didn't like it and we went back to allowing our hair to do what it is supposed to do.

Thanks One Brown Girl! What a great topic!

Your hair, like your girlfriend, is ALL fantastic! LOL. I love that!
When I started my dreadlocs about 6 years ago, my mother HATED my hair. In fact, I had to ask her to keep her point of view to herself. Truth be told, it didn't look so hot in the beginning (my hair texture made the "locking" take for-EH-ver), but now I'm hot (laughing). I really LOVE my haaa iii rrrr (and I love yours too!)...

( http://www.mylivesignature.com )

I only recently started loving my hair (and sometimes, I regress and fret over it). For years I hated it, it was frizzy and wavy, while all the other girls either had straight hair that was always perfect, or curly hair that was in gorgeous ringlets. Me? My hair got kinks from elastics and being tucked behind my ears. It frizzed with the least bit of humidity (I live in the South, so you can see where that might be an issue). It was, in short, a disaster. It made my awkward phase more awkward. It was not my friend.

I have recently started coming to grips with my hair and loving it for all that it is and not hating it for all that it isn't. I'm okay that I was not born with what one of my best friends (who is part Hungarian, Part Cambodian, and ALL fantastic) calls "white girl hair". I am now realizing that that's not all bad.

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