Greatest news EVER!

Okay guys, guess what?! My laptop is fixed! Which is great because now I can write way more blogs and add way more images that I want because my laptop has an SD card reader. I'm really happy. I'll have those two blogs I promised you guys up asap. I just have lots of projects due soon.

By the way, I saw Alice in Wonderland last night, and it was absolutely spectacular. The imagery was gorgeous, and I found it very entertaining.

Speaking of imagery, I was playing around and doing a photomanipulation and this is what I came up with.
(The image surrounded by the text. See the full version here) If you didn't know I love art and graphics, and may go to school for them one day. (That or cosmetology.) Anyway, I gotta get back to working on those projects, but keep on the look out for updates really soon!

I've been down and out for awhile.

It's been awhile since an update, and I'm usually good with blogging regularly, so I do apologize. Sometimes life just hits you harder then you were ready for it, and this week was just one of those times. There was a lot of drama, pain, and I lost a friend that I'll never forget. But shit happens, so I'm just going to have to lick my wounds, right? Right. Anyway, I got my relaxer as planned on monday. I wrote a blog post, so I'll post it now.

So, relaxer day was yesterday, and if I wasn’t sure I that I wanted to self relax, I am definitely sure I want to now. I went to my usual place, with my usual lady, and she is a bit rough, but this time it was just to a whole different freaking level. (Excuse my French, I have more choice words to use, but I’ll try to control them.) She was extremely rough on my hair, combed the relaxer through (Ugh.), and when I started to feel burning she wanted to keep the relaxer in for 3 more minutes because my hair was so tangled.

Now, first of all, my hair was anything but tangled. I spent the last 3 days making sure it was as detangled as possible so that she wouldn’t have much issue and that I would lose much hair. Second of all, it’s a relaxer not a detangled, what the French toast? Now, it honestly gets worse when for the first time ever she just threw some relaxer on my previously relaxed hair. (Luckily it wasn’t on there for long and I COATED my hair with oil and conditioner before going there.) I was practically fuming. ‘

When I get my hair rinsed out finally and what not, after sitting with a deep conditioner in, I go back to the wash lady and she roughly detangles my hair. She was literally ripping the comb through my hair. I was just so taken back by this, because I’ve been going to the same place for a year and this hasn’t ever happened! It’s ridiculous. I mean, my hair felt nice and looked beautiful when they were finished, but this isn’t a sexy hair care journey, it’s a healthy hair care journey!

Now, I’m gonna try to stop fuming and be positive. First of all, I’m like a millimeter from being APL. My hair grew A LOT while in the braids, so I KNOW this will be my go to low maintenance style for the summertime. My hair definitely bounced back from my setback in November, and for that I’m so grateful. But now, I need to take my haircare almost completely into my own hands, and I am going to learn to self relax. My only concern is that I’d rather use a lye relaxer. I know they process faster so my plan is to probably do it in sections. I heard adding an oil to the relaxer can make it process slower, so that’ll also be a part of my plan. I also want to master roller sets and flexi rods.

I want to learn so much this year, and now that I know my hair will definitely be able to make it if I don’t have any setbacks, I’m gonna push for bra strap length hair. I know I can do this. I’m gonna try to incorporate a good amount of protein because my hair thrives when I use protein a lot, plus it’ll need the protein after my disaster of a relaxer.

I'll try to update more often now, I've just been having a bad time lately.

Much love,
Marissa

Some Updates and an Answer

So, for all/any of you who actually regularly check up on this blog,you might of noticed today it looked absolutely nuts. Lmfao. I was in the middle of changing/making a new layout for the blog. Do you like it? I wanted more color, even though I loved the purple and gray combo. Plus now you can see lil' cartoon me sittin' on a tub of Lustrasilk Shea Butter Deep Conditioner. Lol.

Hopefully you guys like this layout, I'm gonna be keeping it for awhile. But I digress. Today after school I went to attend a meeting at our NOW club at my high school and to make t-shirts for a Day of Silence to raise awareness for domestic violence against women. We made stencils then used them to spray paint old t-shirts. Now you might be wondering what my stencil said. It said:

A woman is battered every 15 seconds

Are you shocked? I'm not. Domestic violence is a HUGE problem in the US, and to be more particular, in my high school. I know of tons of guys who've hit their girlfriends, female friends, "wifeys", etc. It's sickening. Good men in my area are a dwindling race to say the least, lol. But I have my boyfriend, so it's whatever.

Anyway, the point of me mentioning the day of silence is to help raise awareness in everyone. Things like domestic violence can't always be seen by the naked eye, so look closely, choose your partners wisely, and if you ever are in an abusive relationship: Get help. Immediately. The longer you stay in the relationship the worse off you are.

But on a totally different note, a couple of ladies requested that I talk about a proper braids regimen. Now personally, when in braids, I believe less is more when it comes to keeping up with your haircare and having them.
I actually have braids right now.


See? That's actually a picture of me and my friend in December, but I still have the braids in and am actually taking them out this weekend. The way I take care of my braids is that I still moisturize and seal, though not daily. I do it bidaily, and about twice a week I oil my scalp with Extra Virgin Olive Oil. On saturday or sunday I wash my scalp (ONLY) with Creme of Nature shampoo, and then condition with my love Aussie Moist. So basically that breaks down to:
Moisturize and Seal: Daily-Bidaily
Oil Scalp: 1-3 Weekly
Wash/Condition:Weekly

I've also heard that to get rid of a chemical that drys out the hair found on synthetic braiding hair, soaking it in Apple Cider Vinegar and rinsing before braiding your hair up can really be helpful.

Hope that helps the ladies who asked! Anywho, that's all for today. Tomorrow's a snow day for me, so maybe I'll work on another blog.

Hope that helped,
Marissa

PS. Please send me more questions via my hairlista account or my email (which is listed in my about me.)

Self-Confidence.

This is coming straight off the top of my head, so I'm not sure if it's going to make sense. I'll probably babble a lot, but hopefully you'll get the point.

I'm very happy with myself. I think I'm pretty and I think I'm cute. I know there are some things that some people wouldn’t find attractive in me, but I also know those same things would be attractive to other people. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, every feature, every detail, every hair color, eye color, body type, and skin color is a toss up when it comes to what will be found attractive by certain people. I’m okay with that. I understand that, but I have to admit it took me awhile to get to this point.

Now, if you haven’t read my about me, I’m only fifteen. That’s young, that’s really young to come to the point where I have settled. I’d view my self image as reasonably healthy. Extraordinarily healthy for my age. Women my age just don’t like how they look. It’s a generally factual statement about my generation. So many things bring us down as women for so long and as time changes the idea of perfect gets more extreme. The hyperbole of the human body the media markets to us is placed on a pedestal, one that no other woman can be on. The weapons of choice? Cosmetics, lighting equipment, photoshop, etc.

Now don’t get me wrong, because photoshop is my one true love. I want to be a graphics artist, and I’ll whip you up a website layout in photoshop in no time. I can edit pictures, change a woman who’s fat to thin, erase every imperfection you can imagine, I can weave a web of lies right before your eyes. With photoshop, the media is god, and they sculpt their coveted angels out of pictures of women who are just like us. They change their appearance. In a fatal swoop they change a talented model to a demigoddess. Whether you realize it or not, you can’t look away. The media creates these images that seem so harmless, but these images are the same pictures that are the phantoms that haunt our minds. The demons prodding us at the back of heads whispering the words, “You’ll never be good enough.”, “You’ll never be skinny enough”, “You’ll never be curvy enough.”, “You’ll never be enough.”, “Never.”

These images are the things that make off-hand comments that aren’t meant to mean anything turn into confidence crushing blows. Want to know what I used to hate about myself? That I was too skinny. That’s right, it seems hard to believe that in a country whose media is obsessed about the thinness of a woman, a girl could think she was too skinny. That a girl could feel a lack of self worth because she wasn’t “womanly enough”. According to many magazines who recognized “real women with curves” it was women who were sticks like me who had “the body of 12 year old boy and gave the wrong idea to women”. May I say… Lol wut? What is the right idea to give to women? No matter what a magazine says about one body type, other body types lose. There’s no such thing as a “real woman”. We’re all real women. We all struggle with the same general problems when it comes to body image. We’re either too much of this or too little of that, we don’t have this, and we have too much of that. But in the end all of those struggles and all of those fears…simply aren’t true.

You are who you are. Changing that for anyone but yourself is a shame. Losing that weight and getting those breast implants are only a band aid to the real problem if you haven’t learned to truly love yourself first. Because even if you don’t love yourself, there’s always going to be that one person who sees you for how wonderful you actually are. Look at yourself through their eyes one day, and see how your weight is fine, your breasts aren’t too small, your hips aren’t too wide, and just give yourself a chance.

Women are beautiful.
You are beautiful.
I am beautiful.

I wish everyone could see this the way I did, but I’m sure that would only happen in a perfect world.

This has kind of been a rant, so I think I’m just gonna stop short here.

Thanks for reading,
Marissa.