Juliet Asante writes: Why are Ghanaians afraid of a woman’s hair?

I will never ever forget the day that scissors fingered my hair. I felt violated. The tender skin around my self-worth was broken.

As a young girl growing up in Liberia, I quickly learnt how to manage my own hair. Gloried in the coarseness of it, with the unmanageability and the uniqueness of my hair, I was confident in the mane my mama born me with.

Until I came back to Ghana.
This week a disgusting video of a black woman practically peeling her skin to look white has been going round.

Before you criticize her, look at yourself and say to yourself that you are not also broken in many ways. You may not be peeling your skin but what else are you peeling?

Is it any wonder that after we avoid intimate intercourse with our hair half of our lives, we spend the other half of our lives trying to perfect a look alien to the black skin, infusing our delicate scalp with chemicals that will make even aliens go green?

When you put that scissors into her hair, you are telling her God made a mistake and gave her hair too tough to manage. You are breaking something that you can never ever piece back together. You are breaking the very spirit of that black girl.

AND DON'T GIVE ME THE STUPID EXCUSE OF TIME! Perhaps let's stop periods too until she graduates?

The cutting of hair I understand is a policy originating from the colonial times. Has anyone interrogated the reasoning behind the policy? Or like sheep, we have simply followed like meek flocks to the slaughter, slaughtering the very essence of the Ghanaian female spirit. Time and time again we spill her blood with glee until like a mere shadow of her warrior ancestors, she scurries away from the rain.

The black hair by the way as created by the ALMIGHTY we so diligently serve was never meant to hide from the rain. Like our ancestors, it stands strong until she is beaten to a mere shadow of who she was born to be; BLACK, STRONG, UNAPOLOGETICALLY BOLD AND BEAUTIFUL…

AND DID NO ONE TELL YOU THAT A WOMAN'S HAIR IS HER GOLD?

#ThedamageIsDeep #Battleofthemind #SelfHate
#yaamusings