Relaxer......was there a misconception?

[sterry]

I remember when relaxers really started to be marketed towads us.

The late night commericials with women with bouncy, shiny, flowing, straight swinging hair. It all look so easy. Buy a box kit, read the directions, wash ,dry and go. There......everything we saw on the commercials, magazines and on the box. Right?
But it didn't happen that way. Did it? More of us are now suffering from, dryness, breakage, brittle, falling hair. Nowhere did they tell us about this.
Was there a misconception as to what a relaxer could do for our hair? Where we led to believe (by marketing) that a relaxer could make our hair look like those of non-ethnic women without doing anything else? Promising shiney, free flowing, low maintenance hair.
I find that most us to achieve that silky, shiny , smoothed and sleek look have to manipulated our hair in wet sets, curling irons, flat irons and blow dryers. All this! Where did they ever tell us of this! All of the damage that this induced.

I know some of it is research. We must learn to protect ourselves by finding out information for our own well being. But what about those who don't have the resources?

You know.....we also see this type of marketing with hair oils, shampoos, conditioners, diet pills ...etc. You name it. All promising something longer, stronger, healthier, thincker, thinner. Draining us of money. Not informing us that we have to do ALOT more things in order to get what we so desire.

I don't know ladies. What do you think. Did your relaxer turn out to be all that you thought it would. From a personal point of view.

4a/natural
medium texture
growing like crazy

 

[pebbles]

Hmmm,

I never really gave it much thought, now that you mention it. The adds on the relaxer boxes show women with gorgeous hair. Perhaps there is some sort of subliminal message behind it all; who knows? I certainly didn't know that relaxers actually dried the hair out more, I had to find that out on my own, the hard way. I did experience breakage, dryness and hair that was falling out. I've had to do the big chop twice before.

For me, I had to learn proper hair care, period. For years, relaxed or natural, my hair wasn't in the best of shape because I really didn't have an understanding about my hair and what it needed. It took me years to find out that relaxed hair has some special needs, but that you can have success with a relaxer if you know how to care for it. This time with a relaxer has been great for me. My hair is the healthiest and longest it has ever been in my entire life.

 

[dontspeakdefeat]

That is some food for thought!

 

[missykeyana]

Image is powerful and perception is everything. What can we do? Think of that lady with goregous hair in the proper context. She probably just stepped out of the stylist's chair. People are fussing all about her. Maybe they added a touch of airbrushing the image. That's all it is, an image. We have to do research to get the real picture, and that goes for everything.

As for my personal experience, the relaxer was okay. I didn't have that 'flowing' hair for a while because I had to learn to take care of it. With practice though, I did achieve a great-looking head of hair.

 

[sassygirl125]

I thought that I would be able to treat my relaxed hair as if it were naturally straight hair. Just shampoo, towel dry and go. Just 15 minutes and by the time I got to school I'd look like Jayne Kennedy, right?

Boy, was I in for a big surprise! After air-drying w/o applying an kind of conditioner or moisturizer to my hair I looked more like Leon Kennedy... Almost everyone in my family wore a press and curl, so they couldn't give me any advice either.

The solution: Daily heat styling.

 

[GinuwinesBoo]

did you post this on RHC too because i think i remember reading this and it states a good point

 

[Guest]

[ QUOTE ]
pebbles said:
Hmmm,

I never really gave it much thought, now that you mention it. The adds on the relaxer boxes show women with gorgeous hair. Perhaps there is some sort of subliminal message behind it all; who knows? I certainly didn't know that relaxers actually dried the hair out more, I had to find that out on my own, the hard way. I did experience breakage, dryness and hair that was falling out. I've had to do the big chop twice before.

For me, I had to learn proper hair care, period. For years, relaxed or natural, my hair wasn't in the best of shape because I really didn't have an understanding about my hair and what it needed. It took me years to find out that relaxed hair has some special needs, but that you can have success with a relaxer if you know how to care for it. This time with a relaxer has been great for me. My hair is the healthiest and longest it has ever been in my entire life.

[/ QUOTE ]

Sterry is DEFINITELY on to something!

I think relaxers were invented to help black women better MANAGE their natural textured hair, but perhaps through the misconceived advertisements (shiny, bouncy, white looking hair), that the intended purpose of the relaxer got lost.

For example, I did the whole relax, blow dry, flat iron for a hundred years.

It wasn't until after I got rid of my braids 3 years ago that I realized I didn't have to do all of that for my hair to look nice.

My hair is still relaxed, but you can still see a great abundance of my hair's natural texture, instead of STRIPPING all of my natural texture out with flat irons/silkeners.

My stylist told me that is the method in which relaxers are supposed to be used, but black people just had to take it to the next level (bone straight) and a lot of people have gone bone bald!

Again, as I said in another post, the black woman's final and desperate attempt to compete with the silky, straight haired white woman, in an endless effort to satisfy a man who probably never gave a damn about her ANYWAY!

 

[Ayeshia]

well the purpose of me getting a relaxer was just so my curl pattern could be more loose. That way i could still have my puff, or achieve silky straight hair when i flat iron withut being afraid of hmidity. I neccesarily didnt want one because of the way the women looked on the box.

 

[sterry]

Yes, I have posted this before on RHC. I wanted to get some more point of views.

I thought this to be some food for thought.

 

[hera]

Don't know...I think when you're behind the camera...you don't really think about things like this too much. If you're human, you live on this planet and participate in main stream culture - you will be captivated by the power of advertisement..unfortunately some people get caught in the trap of trying to being like the images they see in motion and static entertainment and ads. It's up to you to see through this and make a personal choice. I've been doing a lot of photo retouching as part of my career and I have to tell you that it's definitely all an illusion even for the white folks. I've change hair color, skin tone (light or darker), a model with bad skin can suddenly have perfect skin,noses..lips..eyes..breasts... bigger...smaller..a different color. The celebrity you look at..pays thousands for the right stylist,PR and still after that they' require digi-makeup. In the end you have to do what best works for you. For me I love playing with my hair.....for a time I thought relaxed hair would offer me that versatility but I didn't know how to care for it and needed understand that I can't color my hair a different color every other week...it doesn't work...My hair looked like crap a few years back.My joke to my other sister(since no one else understands) ..was that "I'm black, but I don't know how to take care of black hair". I guess that why I'm here and caring for my hair...even though I don't want to grow my hair too long...I think I'm using growth of my hair as a reason to treat my body and it's care better?