Story – Page 19 – PurplePretoria

I was born the second child in the middle of four girls, all very vibrant and more socially adept. All three had a more likeable public persona, at ease among relatives at family parties and during Christmas holidays when we all gathered at my grandmother’s house. While everyone immediately fit in and played in groups, I usually found myself on the outside waiting to be let in. I was always to be found wherever my mother was, like the proverbial “mummy’s child”, hiding behind her skirts.

Until my months at a small village in the deep South West, I had expected for myself what other people expected of me, to melt into the background, to smile coyly and keep my thoughts to myself. I had found my voice five years before but when I had wielded it, it had been coarse and had caused much pain. I had to learn, and I’m still learning how, to harness its power.

The stories about middle children and their internal social conflict are numerous, but this story is not about a middle child. It’s about all of us. The generation of the computer age. We, who operate as avatars and only go offline when we sleep (that is debatable).

Some people have used their avatars for good and some have used their avatars for evil. The invisible line between the real world and online is incredibly blurry. Nothing happens until it happens online.

There are verbal showdowns, laughing-with-tears-streaming-down-your-face-emojis and people always #living their best life. Meanwhile, the person who types the laughing emoji will not even turn his or her mouth up into a smile. Sometimes, they have not laughed in days.

It seems that not even processing the deepest emotions is not reserved from the camera. The ‘event‘ is promptly displayed on the camera by a professional photographer, sometimes at the hospital bed- public sympathy is better than intimate sympathy AND the more followers the better.

In ‘The Camera Effect’ I wrote about how I used to ‘follow’ a YouTube couple- a picture perfect family who eventually bitterly separated and we, the followers were left reeling, wondering what we had missed, between the all-white sparkling walls and the matching pyjamas.

I have been a social media abuser before. On some of those days when I need a breather, I have ‘ranted’ to whoever cared, feeling downright powerless to walk into the office of the people I really needed to talk to and say, menacingly, “You have a problem with me?” I work in a profession where big egos run on dark-roast coffee. Many lawyers would rather lose a case than have someone else shine. Someone needs to work on a research paper on The inflated Ego of a Lawyer in Modern times and its effect on Health’. Ask Mike of Pearson Specter Litt.

It is just a little too easy to access, this virtual reality, every moment, every day at the tap of a screen.

“Look guys, I’m showering! This is how I wash my face; in a slow circular motion! This is how I eat; with a loud awfully cute munching sound! This is how cute my baby looks when I shout at him!”

Then you park your car and switch off the engine and there is no one there. In the dark, you stare at the ceiling and life is boring. You can’t wait to get high on twitter and Instagram again.

I read on Dr. Kasenene’s twitter (yes, that’s now a thing- not an encyclopedia, not a book) that human beings talk to themselves on average 50,000 times a day. I’m certain that with social media, the ancient tradition of looking at the person you are talking to is wilting away.

This generation does not even confirm quote attribution or cite our sources- we just say #stolen!” It does not matter that intellectual property exists – that the ideas, the quotes, the stories that are the creation of a human mind are extremely personal and inimitable that they are protected by law. The binding spell of ‘likes’ overpowers integrity.

Hobbies. It sounds like a word last used in 1997. We used to write down our hobbies (our teachers used it more for enticing white people into becoming pen pals with us); dancing, listening to music, playing football, cooking. Now we only want to be seen to be ‘turning up’ for the 2 seconds in which we raise our phones and capture everyone on the table smiling and nodding their heads; the two seconds before everyone sinks down back into their phones for the rest of the night.

Some have become backing dogs, reckless online, but toothless on sight. Their avatars are lethal with venom on every post and every world situation, even when not under attack.

But it’s the loneliness that gets most of us, that we would spend all day online, on 30 WhatsApp groups and still not have that one friend to talk to about the things that really matter. WhatsApp’s end to end encryption may not be as useful as the ability to deny a request to enter one more fruitless WhatsApp group. After sending supercharged dancing emoticons, it maybe useful to our psychosomatic system to, maybe once in a while, actually wear that red dress and dance.

The problem with African hair, most of it, is that it is frizzy and tightly coiled . I used to refer to mine as steel wire. When you wake up in the morning, it stands straight up in the middle and is matted on both sides, making you look like a baby Sumo wrestler. The thing with natural hair is you must plait it every night before you sleep. You just cannot fall into bed effortlessly, you must always pay it attention.

On that note, I would say it is a big time consumer. Our primary schools used to call it a time waster. If we did not shave it all off, we would have wasted a lot of time getting stupid. That is why only Arabs, Indians and ‘Half-castes’ [this is the word that was used for mixed race people those days] were allowed to grow their hair, because their hair would not make them stupid.

Natural hair is an attention seeker. Whenever you let it out, there will always be someone sniffing at the back of your neck, wishing they were invisible, stretching and pulling back their eager, anxious hand, wondering if you would be offended if they could feel the texture of it, just a little. It looks like wool. Is it wool? Does it deflate when you tap it down? Is it real? All the way down to the bottom? Do you even have a scalp within that tangled mess?

The problem with African hair, most of it, is that it likes to puff up instead of fall backwards. The new generation is lucky. These days, unlike when our mothers combed our hair, the comb does not have to sweep through, from front to back. And it does not have to be a narrow tooth comb, leaving salt water droplets pricking the corners of your eyes, your scalp throbbing.

The thing about natural hair is, it likes to recoil back into tight knots. It is not interested in length checks and stiff straightness. It loves to fluff up at the top if you sleek it on the sides. It loves to fill your head like the dark night of a dense forest where nothing can get it and nothing can get out. On Monday it was long and on Tuesday, a drop of water shrunk it. “Wait, did you cut it?”

Natural hair is a mystery. Years and years of taming it and hiding it and we still do not know what it is. It is stubborn and likes to show off. Even after years of begging it to flow and be pushed around by the wind, it still grows out curly. Then you have to burn your scalp again.

It is not even wedding material. Imagine, a bride, walking down a flower strewn aisle with tight curls on her head! What kind of bride is that, who does not love herself enough to put on at least a weave or maybe even a wig. Imagine her, dancing to her entrance song, a tiara on her head and no ponytail at the back. Where would the tiara even sit?

The problem with African hair, most of it, is that it is expensive to take care of. You need a sulphate-free shampoo so that you don’t punch the moisture out of it. It will be very hard to find this. L’oreal wasn’t made with you in mind. After that you need a conditioner, leave-in conditioner, hair butter, hair oil, and a gel to make your baby hair pop. You need to let people know that it is not all frizzy. Some of it actually sleeps.

The other thing about natural hair- it is so day to day mundane! You can do this all at home without ever stepping into a salon. You could have sat three hours in a dryer but here you are detangling. Where’s the drama and the triumphant exit as you walk out of the salon choking on ORS Olive oil spray?

When you really think about, the biggest problem with natural hair is, it is not straight. It is too African, too common place. Now, if we had Brazilian hair! We could literally whip it back and forth. No more satin headscarves, wake up flawless, you might not even need a face full of makeup to distract from your hair anymore. The problem with natural hair, is, it is not like white people’s hair.