It has been a great Mother’s Day weekend and as it winds down I am sitting here looking at photos of my children thinking about how blessed I am. This weekend was Chicago Natural Beauty Meetup’s first Mother Daughter Event, we had a blast despite a few challenges including a no show but I am thankful to the community of women that helped us in every way possible to still have a successful event. The day started out with a conversation with moms who are attempting to transition their child’s hair from relaxed to natural. I was happy to have one of my YouTube subscribers come out and share her experience and hair style suggestions with our group.
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| Alicia Tolliver Demonstrating a Flat Twist |
After the demonstration and discussion with the moms we began to focus on the children. First up on the agenda was an Africa Dance Performance with instructor Dorcas Owasu of Illinois. I always enjoy seeing the girls dance and I take great pride in my daughter being a part of this group. I over heard one of the moms saying that she felt tearful when she watched the girls dance, another mother thanked me and said she thought it was awesome to see the girls practicing their culture. I never thought of it that way but it is true. In our conversation with the girls we asked the question “Do you ever get frustrated with your hair?” The variety of answers was amazing. I learned the most from this particular segment on our program. Our young girls are feeling pressured to not wear their hair “puffy” many of them feel straight hair is more beautiful and manageable. The most shocking thing is that many of them don’t feel pressure from people of other races but most times the pressure comes from within our own race. It truly saddens me that in this day in age this idea of what is beautiful still exists. We gotta a lot of work to do sisters and brothers. The best part of the day was the kid’s fashion show, each girl strolled down the aisle and at the end told us what made her beautiful, there were lots of great answers “My personality, I am beautiful because I am me”!
We also enjoyed shopping with some of the best vendors here in Chicago! Pretty Africka had some of the most unique items I have ever seen,. I was also super excited to see all of the Crochet Artists, these are some amazingly talented women. Mona Muhammad of Knotty Loop had beautiful crochet clothing and even a book of her designs
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| Knotty Loop |
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| Pretty Afrika |
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| Unique Things |
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| Deana’s Jewelry & Things |
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| Avlon Natural Textures Raffle Winner |
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| Mixed Chicks Soap |
