This past March. Nkem Life sat down with 99.3 Nigeria Info radio to talk about natural hair and the misconceptions of natural hair in Africa. We were so thrilled to share our insight from a Nigerian-American perspective!
Contrary to popular belief most women in Africa today aren’t rocking Afro’s & Twist Out’s. Even if they have made the choice to go natural, it is often hidden under braids, weave or wigs or kept at a low cut.. We believe that many women in Africa do this with their natural hair because they are not knowledgeable about what to do with their natural hair. Over the years women in the Diaspora have been discouraged to wear their natural hair out .
During the scramble and partition of Africa , many African countries were exposed to Western standards of beauty. Countries like Nigeria suffered from imperialism and were colonized by Great Britain. Once that door was opened, African countries definition of beauty slowly started changing. When the concept of perms was introduced to Africa many women began to process their hair because that was now the sign of privilege, class & elegance. To many women in countries like Nigeria natural hair and Afro’s are not really socially accepted .
From our perspective, the natural hair trend is just now slowly starting to resurface . The few women we encountered rocking their natural hair had either been abroad and came back to Nigeria to live and work or visiting. Or young school girls getting out of class rocking their short hair cuts.
Consequently, we were invited to shed some light on how to embrace your natural hair, tips for transitioning and most importantly how to maintain that flat twist in the humidity. Trust and believe Nigeria’ s hot weather showed us no mercy.
Below is a clip form our live radio interview…Enjoy!
No matter what, have fun with who YOU Are & BE YOU !
You will be surprised how receptive people will be.
