Category: Aging

This trend needs to end right now!

*Sighs*

Why are we here with this topic? Well because, I am sick and tired of seeing young women well past the baby stage with baby hairs casually laid across their forehead and edges in almost every hairstyle dreamt up by current and trending stylists who want to keep this God-forsaken look alive when it should be dead, eulogized, buried, and left ALONE!

I said to my best friend and cousin in a text message the other day: “I really, really hate those stinking fake baby hairs these young women have in their hairstyles. I cringe every time I see it. *Sighs*” My cousin, ever the optimistic, responded, “It’s a fad. This too, shall pass.” It’s a fad that doesn’t need to be a fad that makes absolutely no sense.

Back in the day when this style was IN, circa the 70s, 80s, and 90s, little girls and young women actually had baby hair or slick hair with which to lay their edges and forehead. These young women are creating curly Qs and baby hairs where they just aren’t supposed to be and doing so in such a way that requires calculation and geometrical tactics, and I just have to shake my head. Exhibit A: feast your eyes on this YouTube short of someone teaching her audience how to apply baby hair to a hairstyle:

I should have prefaced this by saying if this is your thing . . . do you, boo. Please, do you. There are a ton of other things I could be soapboxing about, but this here is the hill I chose today, so here is where I stand. I love people expressing themselves in every way they choose, but what I do not like are folks grabbing hold of something they think is new and running that thing into the ground without being keenly aware of why that thing existed in the first place.

The crush’s daughter loves this baby hair trend. I told the crush how I felt about it and she is in agreement. Her response was, “You know these kids gotta do what they see others do. Makes no sense to me, but that’s how it is now.” And yes, that is HOW it is now. There is no originality, no uniqueness, no want to build and create something that may not have happened before or to at least put such a spin on that thing that folks believe it has never occurred before.

I am going to segue briefly to the fact that I encountered a clerk at The UPS Store a few days ago while mailing a package who could not read cursive. I spelled my name, my mother’s name, the addresses, etc. And she still did not type the info correctly into the system. I finally had to pull out my driver’s license, hand it to her, and say, “Please just look at my license and get my information. I’ll repeat the recipient’s info momentarily.” I was so frustrated with this child that I had to take several deep breaths when exiting the store. This is what happens when cursive and penmanship are removed from schools.

The younger generation has a foreign language before them when one writes in cursive. It’s perplexing to me, and I will never understand it!

Back to the baby hair issue. My godsister had a style with baby hairs when I went home to Savannah, GA to visit this past April, and it took everything in me not to word-vomit all over our brunch every time I looked at her. She’s in her 30s. WHY, boo?! WHY? LOL. She asked me a few times, “You okay,” and mildly, each time, I’d say, “Yeah, I am good.” Because my food was too good to allow the likes of someone else’s hair to ruin it and the mood was far too great for me to actually dampen it with something over which I have no control. I wasn’t going to rain on everyone’s parade. I know when to reel it in and act accordingly. But boy was it hard!

It is becoming evident that my generation is old and bold and the younger generations behind us are young and shunned. We can survive with little to nothing, display ingenuity when it most requires it, have lived through getting home before the streetlights came on, know what VHS and cassette tapes are, and can probably quote 75% of the movie The Color Purple (1985) without hesitating or flinching.

If you are a habitual baby hair applier, I wish you peace. I hope you find the hairstyle that fits perfectly with your face and head, and that you do not continue to beat a dead horse that should have never been resurrected. And if you intend to carry this trend deep into 2025, at least, use gels and spritzes that won’t push your hairline back five years from now. Think of your forehead, children . . . think of your edges. What have they ever done to you to deserve this?

*No baby hair was harmed, maimed, or brutally criticized outside of this post. Don’t come for me, please.*

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HAPPY NEW YEAR, beautiful people! If you can’t laugh, you can’t live. Peace and blessings. And may the new year be most kind to all of you.