In middle school I was not always the most fashionable kid. It might have had something to do with me being a little dorky or my then recent change of environments: what was hot in Trinidad was not in the States. Of course it also had to do with the politics of blackness and that was something I had not have fully gauged at that age. My hair was natural for most of my middle and high school careers.
Once in 7th grade my sister twisted and cork-screwed my hair (cork screw=bantu knot), then we unraveled them so I’d have curls. I loved the way it came out and I dressed up a little to fit the hairstyle. When I got to science, one of the girls in the class told me, “Somebody said you look like Medusa.” All I did was say ok, but my confidence was lost; not shattered but definitely cracked.
She obviously didn’t disagree with whoever said that, obviously felt a need to let me know this and there was obviously some negative conversation somewhere in the building about my hair. No one else had a hairstyle like mine. Not that no one else had natural hair, but this look may have been bolder than others. This was not the only time other children said negative things about my hair.
By the time I got to eighth grade I had gotten my hair pressed and curled a few times. I’d begged my parents to buy me expensive jeans and Nike sneakers. I wanted to be like all the other “cool” black children at school. But I didn’t last very long as a cool kid. At some point during all my attempts to be cool I realized that something was not right. I remember asking myself, “What are you doing? Why be a carbon copy of everyone else?”
Starting in the summer before 9th grade I made a complete turn-around that lasted all through high-school. I had absolutely no desire to look like anyone else and an understanding that there was nothing wrong with my natural hair but something wrong with the way black people felt about natural hair. (I don’t remember this but a few friends of mine said that I used to say I’d never get a perm)
My clothes became a major part of the way I expressed myself: I cut up jeans and t-shirts, put paint on pieces (including the infamous Timberland boots I made purple with house paint), I wore my father’s dress shirts and ties, I’d take dresses and make them into tops, wrap some cloth around my waist, or wear two different sides of earrings. I also experimented with my hair. At one point I had extension braids with blue highlights, at other times a big “twist-out” Afro, but mostly I’d wear my hair in two-strand twists. One classmate used to call my jewelry “tribal” Another classmate wrote in my senior yearbook, “Stay strange”
When I started college I was too drained personally for that creative energy to flow freely. I started blending in clothes wise and actually got the perm (it didn’t feel right though and I barely made 10 months before I cut off all my hair and went back natural).
For this year’s homecoming a friend suggested we invoke the essence of Fela Kuti’s Queens. As we were getting dressed and playing music, the creative energy was amazing and we both ended up with great looks. The response on campus was mixed. There were a few jokes (like, “I didn’t know you were a Zulu”); quite a few questioning, perplexed stares; I later heard from a friend that one guy standing near us said, “I hope they’re performing” (as in, a performance is the only reason we should look like this) I’m glad that she promptly turned around and told him that we were not! On a more positive note, there were lots of people who were really digging the look.
There was a great sense of satisfaction and warmth for me in being able to create like this again; and nostalgia. I felt like my true spirit had been rekindled. It was also great to be unabashedly African, Medusa hair and all. I’ll be even happier when I can be around black people and not have to explain my (and their) African-ness, when I can just BE.
Zahra Gordon 
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