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perm ritual would send me to the salon twice a year, my hair texture meant a perm lasted much longer than my step-sisters who had to go four times. I learned to wet set it with the big, plastic Goody rollers and always use end papers. I experimented with styles and essentially kept some type of mild perm in my hair until my twenties. By then I had married, had a child, and moved to a big Midwestern city, I didn't have a hair dresser there and my one time at my mother-in-laws salon was a disaster. This was during the late 80s and the drippy season of the Jheri curl. I moved from that mess to the S-curl and shunned all the drippy pomades that were supposed to activate the curl. It was the closest to my natural hair texture so I eventually just let it grow out until it was resembling Angela Davis. This wasn't good for my very conservative job at the bank where the other black secretary at the time would spend her lunch hours getting her short, cropped hair "done" every Wednesday.

I went to a barber and had him cut it off to its natural self. It was a cute little fro and it grew like weeds. I was teased by this black secretary but I just kept telling her my Creole heritage and this was my natural hair. The pressure of the conservative, IBM-like atmosphere eventually sent me to a male hair stylist who did wonders for my hair. I was back to the perm and he did all manner of styles for a few years. There was a day I asked him to cut it off, it was cute, this time like Halle Berry's cropped style. I wore it like that for about three years, at a different company, but still conservative. That changed in 1993 when I got pregnant with my last son. I went for braids.

The braids were my primary hairstyle for the next three or four years. I learned to do them myself and found the synthetic hair that was more like my natural hair. I would marvel at each rebraiding how thick and curly my natural hair was, now falling down my shoulders. I worked in state government by then so still kept my braids in a conservative style. I was happy until I succumbed to church pressure to be like the other ladies and off to a home salon again!

She permed my hair and I nearly jumped out-of-the-seat! She said I had "virgin" hair and that's what sent hot tears welling down my cheeks. She did a great job in styling however,and my longer hair was now slick, straight, and shiny. I got compliments all around. I eventually tired of the upkeep and asked her to cut it to shoulder length and trim the bangs.

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