Growing up, going to get my hair done was always an experience for so many different reasons like the conversations, the actual process of watching your hair go from wild to laid, and the magazines laying around.
Even though the salon is a very social place of women telling crazy stories, giving advice, and gossiping I was a quiet and shy person growing up who wouldn’t talk much while there. I always love to pick up a magazine, especially the hair magazines, and look through it while sitting under the hairdryer or waiting to sit in the hairdresser’s chair.
My whole life I’ve always worn pretty basic hairstyles- a wrap, curls, and weave from time to time. I never drifted too far away from them, and mainstream media really didn’t show black women with too many variants of hairstyles either. Sometimes in music videos, you’d see a few more hairstyles that were different by female artists and other women in the background. Other than that I had to wait until I went to the salon and thumb through the hair magazines.
Magazine’s like Hype Hair, Black Hair, and Sophisticate’s Black Hair Styles and Care Guide guaranteed I’d see all the cute, crazy, fun, and creative hairstyles that I would never have the gumption to try on myself. Looking through hair magazines amazed me with all the different styles-long, short, curls, waves, updos, braids, waterfalls, natural, colors, etc plus all the black celebrities I liked featured in it too. I would get lost in the hairstyles trying to figure out how some of them were done. I also loved that the magazines would have all types of black women in these different hairstyles.
Those magazine’s were apart of the salon experience just as much as your scalp burning from the perm being on too long, holding your ear so your edges could get pressed, and sitting under the dryer for hours while your curls set or braids under your weave dried.
I always thought maybe when I got older I would try some of the fun styles I was too young to get, but I haven’t. Its never too late, right?
Have you ever tried any hairstyles from the magazines? Which styles would you try now?
Comments