Bangs

As I watched an episode of “Grownish” on demand, Chloé x Halle’s characters were in need of making extra income. One of the girls came into the scene with a band-aid on her eyebrow, when asked what happened she mentioned she tried to wax her own eyebrows and made a huge mistake. After I saw this scene I was reminded how I had my eyebrows and skin ripped off my face from my first college roommate. You may be asking yourself how that would even happen, so let me tell you.

Being 17 and in college at the time, I had very little money, even from my mailroom job at the school. My roommate told me she use to do hair and she knew how to wax from a salon she worked at back in her home state. I had/have thick eyebrows, so needing to maintain them was a must and I let her do it. Feeling how extremely hot the wax was, she assured me it’s normal and don’t worry.  She rips off the paper with my skin and eyebrow hairs attached to it. She did the same to the other eyebrow as well. After I was allowed to look in the mirror I screamed bloody murder and ran out. The next day I had a new hairdo...bangs. Between raw skin on the top and bottom of both eyebrows (or what was left of them), the bangs were a must. I also had burn marks because my friend, Greg, decided to torture me and apply alcohol to the ripped skin. Therefore, I channeled my inner Tootie and rocked those bangs like my skin wasn’t missing underneath.

Minimum wage should have been increased back then.  If I made more than $6 an hour in that mailroom, I would have been able to go to a professional and my eyebrows would still grow in certain areas.  I beg of you to never ever let a friend do your hair or eyebrows unless you can see pictures of their work. Granted who would do that nowadays since we live in “social media la la land”,  but you’d be surprised what desperation and eyebrows that grow like wildfire will make you do.

I didn’t have the whole haircut, but I cut some thick bangs like her. Only difference is mine covered where my eyebrows were. Thanks Tootie, for the inspiration. 

Differences?

The past few weeks have been working with a close friend of mine, Nate, for his PR company The Hinton Group. Blessed and courageous are the only words describe his efforts, as he quit his job to start his own company and begin with not 1 but 5-6 clients. It’s NYC in February so that means Fashion Week craziness and Nate currently has all fashion clients that are producing runway shows. So he put together a team of superwomen to help him, because who wouldn’t do that?

There’s 5 of us total, all ages and completely different. He picked the cream of the crop, all of us have worked with Nate throughout the years. But let’s be clear I’m not a fan of the PR world,  I came out of retirement this one time for Nate, at the end of this week, I’ll be crawling back into my creative writer’s cocoon. I have to say I was hesitant when I knew I’d be working with a crew of young females. Unfortunately this was due to some negative stereotypes of female crews that you don’t know such as egos, no one will get along or the shade will be stifling,  etc., etc. To be honest it’s all a mindset.

After I had that thought of hesitancy I didn’t allow it to linger,  I let it pass out of my mind. The longer you allow negative thoughts to hold you, the more power you give them and then they take over. Since I now have the power of my mind, I walked into the situation with thoughts of positivity and knowing that Nate wouldn’t surround himself with nonsense. The young women I’m working with are awesome. One of them, Nqobi, use to be an intern of mine years ago, whom I treasure and hold close to my heart.  To see her growth over the years and knowing her potential...she’s going to be an unstoppable force.  But each of ladies having amazing personalities, are great at their given tasks and we help each other when needed. No second thoughts when it comes to giving a hand and no attitudes. Wouldn’t that be wonderful if the world would flow like that? Especially as females since we’re in this state of “woman power”.  I don’t care what any one says the state of “womanhood/sisterhood” is, until we change our thoughts there won’t be a change in the elements. So as women we need to move in the same rhythm and show the world how we make chocolate cake out of lemons!