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What's up, beautiful people?
It is your homegirl, Ms. Shameless,
all up in your building.
Specifically, possibly your phone,
your tablet, your computer, your TV. I don't know.
But let me know in the comments below.
This video is all about my hair.
A lot of you might be like, girl, your hair looks different.
It's straight. The curls are looser.
Yes. All of that is true.
But I just wanted to walk you through how I got here
by going back, taking it back to the past
on what my hair was like as a kid.
I think as a child all the way until I was 12
I've always had short hair, shorter than this.
And that was because my dad always cut my hair
and wanted me to look like him. Don't know why. Blah.
When my mom left him, that's when I started to grow my hair.
And I was low-key happy, because I was like,
yay, finally I get to look like a girl,
because everyone thought I looked like a boy.
But yeah, when I was 12, we moved out,
and then she started to grow her hair.
The products I was using then were Frizz Ease --
and it was so expensive -- by John Frieda.
And so I would use that on occasion,
and I would saturate my hair with it,
and it was super rock-hard, and I had major shrinkage.
It would be down to here,
but it really was just chillin' over here.
What was my relationship with my hair?
My mom attempted to relax my hair because I begged her to,
but as soon as she put it in I started screaming
because it was burning, so she washed it out.
But my mom, if anything, loved my curls.
She, in fact, permed her hair to look more like
me and my brother versus trying to get my hair straight.
She would criticize me for trying to get rid of my curls.
But I just couldn't take it.
So that was cool, that my mom loved my hair
and told me to love my hair, but I was just like, no.
I don't want to. It's just so curly and puffy.
It was just puffy. I just did not know how to deal with it.
When you always slick your hair in a bun,
you have a receding hair line.
My hair line was back here when I was a kid
because I always pulled it back,
and then we were in the mall going shopping, and
there was this sales associate at All Those Shoes [ph.],
and her hair was out and curly,
and my mom's like, "How do you get your hair like this?
Because my daughter, she doesn't like her hair.
She always pulls it in a bun."
So she told us about a bunch of products she used,
and I tried, and I just was never comfortable.
I would always wear it half up half down or in a bun.
Or better yet, the icicles.
Did anyone do the little icicles here?
I would do icicles right here, sometimes four, sometimes two,
depending on how I felt.
If you guys watch my previous video, my throwback,
the products of the time were Pink Luster, Dep Gel.
I would say the only complication my mom had
with my hair was how thick it was.
It was very thick, and every time I went to daycare,
it would be all over the place.
So the daycare teacher felt so sorry for me,
this Jamaican woman, so she started braiding my hair.
Then I would come home to my mom and she'd be like,
"Your hair. Who did it?"
And I'm like, "Oh, my daycare teacher."
My daycare teacher taught my mom how to braid.
So my mom's little nimble Filipino fingers were
braiding my hair, but I just had three fat doodoo plaits,
two on either and one down the middle,
or sometimes she'd go in-in and give me four, maybe five.
But they were always frizzy.
And it was cute.
But when this teacher went in,
I was serving you all kinds of braids with barrettes.
I would say braiding my hair as a kid
was my favorite hairstyle.
I'll also say before my hair was long enough to braid,
my hair was too short to do anything to it,
so my favorite hairstyle was taking my mom's scarf,
tying it in my head -- then it's a long bow
so I could run and my bow would flow in the wind
so I felt like I had hair.
Because as a kid they really brainwash you with
those hair commercials, those Herbal Essences commercials
where it's like, oh, yes, look --
it's like, I don't have that. I have an Afro.
So I will give you some little fall-off with my hair scarf.
My least favorite is when my dad would take a pick
and pick my hair out and give me an Afro
and would send me off into the world
looking like a boy. Least favorite, then and now.
I started doing my own hair I want to say nine.
Eight or nine I started doing my hair.
And that's when I gave you slicked back.
I gave you this slicked back.
Then it was a hair elastic here,
then a hair elastic here, then a hair elastic here.
Oh my goodness, to fake a long ponytail,
my mom would pull my hair into a half-up ponytail here
and then a half down here,
so it's like two ponytails on top of each other,
and then she would brush the hair into each other
so it looked like I had a long ponytail
when it was really just two nubs brushed together.
[laughing]
And I was feeling myself with that hairstyle. Shoot.
That was my hair journey as a child pre-YouTube.
I think I really started to embrace my hair in high school
towards the end of it,
so at that time I actually truly embraced my hair,
and embracing for me meant wearing it out.
Not in a bun, not in a ponytail, not in braids,
but just wearing it completely out.
That was in like '99.
1999, 2000, I was the original natural hair, girls, okay?
She was a OG.
I always wore my hair curly.
I would blow it out. I would press it out.
But I never chemically did anything to it.
Then fast-forward to my YouTube channel,
and everyone was asking me about my hair, like,
oh my God, hair envy, I love your hair.
How did you get it to look like that?
I was just like, whoa, I never even --
okay, thank you. Because I couldn't stand my hair.
So I started to do videos on my hair.
And those did well. They actually went viral.
NaturallyCurly.com did an article.
A ton of hair outlets did articles on me and my journey.
But I was like, I feel like an impostor,
because I'm not a hair person.
I'm just uploading videos about being shameless.
So I told myself, year one, I'm going to shave
all of this hair off, because people are too attached to it,
and I'm not, and people are envying something
that I don't think defines me,
and it's not the be-all and end-all of my beauty.
It's coming from my inside outwards,
emanating into the universe, with or without my hair locks.
But the big chop -- the shave-off of my natural hair
that had no chemical treatment --
I thought it wasn't a big deal, even shaving my hair off.
I will say I felt vulnerable,
because I was letting go of a lot of stuff.
At the time I was going through a divorce,
and I just felt like this was symbolizing me
letting everything go.
And it was cathartic.
The next day I forgot that I shaved my hair off,
and when I saw myself in the mirror I was like,
agh, I feel like -- I felt old and I felt sick,
because usually when you're bald
that's associated with age or illness.
I didn't like how I felt. I didn't like how I looked.
But I was just like, girl, you better work this.
This is what it is.
And it took some time, but I finally got to a place
where I can embrace being bald.
And it made me strong.
It made me feel like I didn't have to rely
on this thing to get me views, to get me clicks.
And I loved me a bald moment.
I would shave my hair every two weeks
when I started to grow it, and every two weeks
go to the barber shop and buzz that.
Started to rock some fades.
Started to rock some designs, not such good designs, either,
that you would never see because I never posted it.
And then I started to play with color. I started dying it.
Bleach became my best friend.
I loved it because bleach is obviously awful for your hair.
It strips it of everything.
But when your hair is that short
and it grows every two weeks,
it doesn't matter when it breaks or falls apart,
because two weeks, I have a new set of hair.
Once it was bleached, I played with colors.
I was teal, purple. I did a lot of colors.
And that was a lot of fun.
I would say the curls with the teal was
my favorite phase of the color wheel.
And my hair has been short for most of my YouTube career.
I've been on YouTube for five years.
My hair was short for four of those,
and now it's finally growing back.
But when my hair was super short, when I was like,
you know what, no more color, Maya,
I was just like, be dark, be natural.
So I did that.
And then I started to play with the texturizers.
I started to get hooked on the texturized life,
mainly because my hair was short,
and I wanted that look, that Nia Long,
that nineties total -- that short -- that's what I wanted.
That's what I was striving for.
And I would always go to the salon.
Having short hair introduced a whole new world
of salon living.
I was in the salon every two weeks
getting my hair pressed because I wanted that look.
But then I said to myself, you know what,
I want to be able to do this at home.
Can you guys loosen my hair texture so it's easy?
Because you need heat and technique to really
get it straight, which I didn't have,
so he was like, "Okay, let me just texturize it."
And he did an amazing job. His name is Bear [ph.].
I'll put it in the info box below.
But he did a great job on having my curls still there
but just slightly looser.
He would just literally put in the relaxer,
wash it out as soon as he put it in, and I was living.
Then I went to a new salon
because I was tired of waiting in his waiting area
for like two hours.
I'm like, I got things to do, buddy.
So I went somewhere else, and I started hopping around,
and that's when ish started to hit the fan.
When your hair grows out, you have roots, right?
So I only needed a texturizer here. Not here. This is fine.
This is living. This part here, this is new growth.
I need to treat this.
She put it in my entire head, and I was like,
"What's going on? What are you doing?"
She's like, "Oh, I'm relaxing your hair."
I'm like, "No, I don't ever relax my hair!
Why'd you do that?"
And so she washed it out, she styled my hair,
so I had no idea what it looks like.
If anything, actually, this is when I had the bowl cut look.
I love that moment.
But I had no idea what it looked like
until I washed my hair out.
Then my hair was like, oh, yeah, we coasted.
We're not doing anything. We're just gonna chill.
Not give you no curl, no wave, just pfft. Devastated.
So then I started to grow my hair out.
And I was halfway of new growth.
Then I went to another stylist to get it pressed out
for an event. Pressed, okay? Pressed.
He damaged my hair. I already had half of new growth.
The whole thing now was just like, wow, Maya.
Learn, learn, learn from this.
Don't just hop into any salon. Don't just trust randoms.
Really do your homework and really do multiple screenings,
because I messed up, and now my hair, it's messed up.
Right now, there was a roller set.
I just put rollers in and I slept with it and I took it out.
But no more heat. This is heat damage.
I think the relaxer has grown out, but I'm just like,
this is not my natural hair texture.
I think back here is. Some here. There's some curl there.
[fake-crying]
I'm using this mirror. Shout-out to Impressions Vanity.
So now I'm having to learn how to keep my hands to myself,
leave my hair alone.
But I've been playing. I've had short hair for four years
that I never really got to do anything,
so as much as I want to cut off all this damaged part,
I'm like, nah. I love braids.
So let me play with some braids. Let me give you some cornrows.
Let me give you a high ponytail.
The fact that I can even put my hair in
a little mini bunny-tail is exciting for me.
After four years of being short, I want to have longer hair.
I don't know how long I'm gonna go,
but I am having fun with some length, finally.
I think I would say in this hair journey of mine,
I've played with the color. I've played with the relaxer,
texturizer, which is something I can't say I did
when I started my YouTube.
Everyone praised me for being this natural girl.
And I was like, I just never went there.
But I'm here now, in that position of,
how do I get my hair better?
It really all boils down to, be patient and let it grow out.
In the meantime, I'm gonna play with some roller sets.
Lots of braids. And I think I'm gonna start doing wigs.
But what am I using to moisturize my hair?
Whatever they gave me that's free.
I'm using the SheaMoisture Jamaican Castor Oil, I think?
It's a mask. I don't know. I have a bunch of masks.
I will insert the footage of what's in my bathroom
right now right here.
That's what I'm using. I'm not doing anything crazy.
I'm not doing any oils, unless it's my scalp.
I do oil my scalp, but I'm not really doing much to my hair.
But hopefully in the next year, you see something
fully natural without heat damage and all that.
Give me shoulder-length. That's the goal.
Let's aim for the shoulders.
I hope you guys found this video helpful.
If you did, make sure you like this video.
I would love to know your hair journey,
so let me know in the comments below,
are you wanting to grow your hair, cut your hair, dye it,
straighten it, perm it?
Who does perms? I low-key want to perm my hair back to curls.
But my friend said no, so I was like, okay, okay.
I learned my lesson, okay?
Let me know what your next move for your hair is.
And until next time, remember to do you,
be you and stay true, boo. Be shameless.
Work with what you got, okay?
I'm just gonna work with this. I'm gonna make this work.
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