“You are not Natural Compliant”

One day, after uploading a picture of mine as my BB Display Picture, a former classmate of mine sent me a message saying “Do you know that if you really want to go into natural beauty thing, you shouldn’t be using makeup.” I was really surprised about that statement, because I have never given anyone the impression that I was into natural beauty. I instantly told her that I was not into natural beauty or anything, since I use creams with chemicals on my skin, rather than Shea butter and herbs. I told her my business is natural hair, not natural look, because the next thing I know, she would say I should stop wearing earrings, so I could comply with the naturalness. The funny thing is that I don’t use a lot of makeup, so it’s not like I was looking like a painted masquerade. In fact, the picture in question is the picture where I was wearing a purple ankara jacket in this particular post. I in-turn pointed out the fact that she also uses powder and lip gloss when her lips are dry.

It took another dimension about two weeks later. There was a very harsh harmattan weather in Lagos the week before Christmas. I did not see it coming, so I did not step up my moisture level. This made my hair detangling very difficult. In the end, I lost a lot of hair while washing. I was so sad, and decided to put my hair in kinky braids till the harmattan goes, in order to prevent further damage. A week later, I uploaded the pictures below on my phone.

And then what happened, my friend pinged me again. She asked if it was my hair 100%. I told her I had to add a little kinky attachment that weekend because the weather was tearing my hair into pieces. She said I should have done the twist without attachment, since she thought I was “Natural Compliant”. At this point, I was really confused. What exactly is the meaning of ‘Natural Compliant’? What are the boundaries, who makes the rules of what being Natural Compliant is, when does one stop being Natural Compliant, etc.? So, does the fact that I added a little kinky extension to my hair mean I am no more natural?

I just told her that my hair normally is always in twists, even when the weather dealt with it, and it needed extra protection at that time because it still broke, and that using kinky extensions doesn’t mean you are not ‘Natural Compliant’ since it doesn’t alter the texture of your hair. And then she gave me a sarcastic reply like “Yeah- protect your hair by doing tiny weaves ‘with your hair’ or ‘with attachment’,” to which I replied that I was trying to protect my ends at that time. The conversation ended there, and I was happy about the fact that I didn’t have to lash out or ignore her, because I was tempted to do just that.

So people, what do you think? What is the meaning of being ‘Natural Compliant’, does using extensions or make up stop us from being natural, or do you think some people are just taking things too far?