My Two-Pence on Blue Ivy's Hair

I've wanted to write a post about Blue Ivy's hair for sooooo long. I just didn't know where to begin. The issues surrounding black women's hair are so complex that there's just no way that it can be tackled in a few paragraphs. I was scanning Facebook about a year ago as I do most days when I have shit loads of work to do yet find myself procrastinating, when I came across a pic of Blue Ivy Carter out in Paris with her parents.

Beyoncé, Jay-Z & Blue Ivy having Lunch in Paris last year

Didn't think much about it until I read the comments. Anything Beyoncé related is always surrounded by controversy. You have the unashamed Stans who will defend everything Beyoncé related to death from her lace-fronts to her toe nails, and then there's the conspiracy theorists who will tell anybody and their mother that Beyoncé is part of the Illuminati and is only so successful because she has sold her soul to the devil. Now anybody who knows me personally knows which side I play for. After my behaviour at the Sound of Change concert, where I pushed many queens out of the way to get as close as possible to Beyoncé just in case she handed the mic to me so I could do her backing vocals for 'Love On Top' made me realise that I might be borderline Stan, but that's neither here nor there. I digress. Beyoncé fan or not, I was disgusted by the ridiculous amount of comments about Blue Ivy's hair being 'nappy' and 'wild'.

Really? People are arguing over a toddler's hair? This picture kept popping up on my timeline that day and subsequent photos have popped up during the weeks and months that followed, mostly on natural hair pages. This is what confused me the most, you've got BLACK women who are advocates for natural hair, criticising Bey and Jay for leaving THEIR daughter's hair in it's natural state??? How does that even make sense? These are the same people who are constantly praising Solange Knowles for embracing her natural hair and for having a style that's completely opposite to her sister. Obviously it isn't just sistas with natural hair making these comments, but most of the pages I follow on social media are some how related to natural hair/lifestyle so that's what constantly appears in my news feed or timeline.

As a mother of a daughter a few weeks older than Blue Ivy, all of this just doesn't sit right with me. Obviously Beyoncé and Jay-Z are a superstar power couple, every single thing they do or say is under a microscope so of course the world will be watching their daughter closely as she grows up. I just think that some things are off limits though. Regardless of being one of the most famous 2 year olds in the world, she is just that, a 2 year old. A little black girl that all these blog posts, facebook status' and now a PETITION are saying that she has 'bad hair' and she isn't enough. As if we as black women/girls don't face enough struggles, aren't constantly told by society that our full lips and broad noses are ugly and our thick hair is 'bad', now sistas are picking on a baby? Come on, do better. The same people criticising Beyoncé for looking too European are attacking her daughter for having black hair? To quote the ridiculous petition "This matter has escalated to the child developing matted dreads and lint balls." Maybe they're locing her hair, maybe they're not. It's nobody's business. Some of you are acting like you want the child to look like this:

 

I wonder if any of these people who signed the petition have ever tried doing a 2 year old's hair? It's incredibly time consuming, they don't sit still and it hurts them. Every black woman (and most black men) know the struggle of having their hair done as child, having your scalp greased with dax or blue magic and the comb dragged through your hair. Maybe Beyoncé is sparing Blue Ivy that pain. Maybe she's too busy showing Blue the world to care about her hair, I know that child more stamps in her passport than most adults. Or maybe, just maybe it's NOBODY'S GOD DAMN BUSINESS!!