Texturism

Texturism is the sister of Colorism.

By now we all know what that is, but I will explain the term in a specific matter.

Colorism in my opinion stems from black on black racism, media and the natural hair community. Unfortunately men and society need labels for EVERYTHING and needs a representation to showcase that label. And unfortunately the specific type of representation is fueled through keeping The American Dream a thing.

So you still have to be something close to "The American Dream Girl". American dream girl has blue eyes, tall and blonde and "the socially accepted girl" has 3c hair or above and light to white skin. We have yet to evolve the American dream and there isn’t a whole lot of people fighting for that to happen. Honestly I don’t blame them we have enough to fight for already “that’ll just have to wait”. I get it, and I am not making this article about that either. But what I am trying do is educate the natural hair community on the poison ivy lying beneath the surface and to get us natural queens back to why we even started this movement.

American dream girl has blue eyes, tall and blonde and "the socially accepted girl" has 3c hair or above and light to white skin. We have yet to evolve the American dream and there isn’t a whole lot of people fighting for that to happen. Honestly I don’t blame them we have enough to fight for already “that’ll just have to wait”. I get it, and I am not making this article about that either. But what I am trying do is educate the natural hair community on the poison ivy lying beneath the surface and to get us natural queens back to why we even started this movement.

First, let’s throw this texture chart AWAY. That’s the biggest poison right there. I understand we may need something to look back and reference from but this method isn’t factual and it doesn’t leave much detail. So why do we insist on this being the end and be all of natural hair. I’m telling you right now your hair has been every texture! We manipulated our hair on a regular basis. We also have more than one texture in our hair. I know my natural hair has three different texture. The front of my hair is very different from the back and the middle is different from both. How am I suppose to accurately label my texture if it’s constantly changing.

How to determine what porosity level you are, there are a few test google it. This article is already long but one method is watching how long your hair dries. If it takes a long while to dry, chances are you have high porosity and vice versa.

I know your like “okay so how do we label our hair” that’s the thing, you DON’T. What you focus on is how your hair reacts to certain things. Like porosity, this is very important to know about your hair. This tells you how your hair retains water and moisture. One of the most important things for natural hair is WATER. There’s three categories of porosity, low, high and medium. Low meaning your hair takes a while for water or moisture to sink into your strands. High meaning the opposite and medium is the perfect balance.

Once that’s discovered you’ll know what products and home remedies work for your hair. Educate yourself about you! Once you do you’ll find it easier to maintain healthy natural hair. Stay away from comparing yourself to other textures, and don’t let the “desired curl pattern” prevent you from loving yours. Your uniquely beautiful no one looks like you.

What does texturism meant to you?

Texturism means to me a source of information I want to change for me and if you want to join and agree with my new definition then continue following along. Right now texturism has a negative connotation followed behind it but I’m a positive princess and I like to end on a positive note. I am now someone who can recite many positive synonyms of the term texturism when before I was at a place where I didn’t know anything about it and how I got here was through experimenting in my natural hair journey. Texturism means so much more to me now than it did before and society will not tell me how I’m supposed to feel about my hair only I decide that.

I wish you the best my love whoever you are and I hope you continue educating yourself!

Best,

Nia Jean-Baptiste