When I was a little girl, my great grandmother would allow my cousin and I to sit and watch Sesame Street in the afternoons. We learned ABCs, counted numbers, sang songs, and learned so many lessons from Elmo and Big Bird. As we got older, the lessons that were taught in school seemed to mirror or support a lot of those concepts and I learned that Sesame Street was a pretty cool show.
Fast forward to 2018 where I have two little girls and a not-so-little boy and I found myself looking to Sesame Street again for additional lessons. I have always taught my children that they are beautiful. Not because of their outward appearance, but because of their hearts and the way their hearts love so freely. I have also taught them that they are beautiful because of their uniqueness. No one in the world can do exactly what they do the exact way they do it. God created them special.
So, when my beautiful melanin enriched preschooler started asking me if her hair was beautiful, I started to take notice. My Honeybee has a tightly coiled texture of hair that craves moisture. She has the most beautiful tight coils and when wet they remind me of soft little springs. They do what they want to do and sometimes we find ourselves “pumping them up” with mayonnaise and olive oil treatments to repair and strengthen. It’s worked beautifully. But my Honeybee has noticed that her hair doesn’t move like some of her cousins or peers who have different grades of hair. That has raised questions. So when I found out that Sesame Street recently released an episode all about hair and it doing it own thing while featuring a kinky coiled melanin beauty like my Honeybee, I was all about it. I recorded the show to watch with Honeybee, but S. accidentally deleted the recording!!!!
I was heartbroken until I stumbled across our OnDemand and found the episode. Saturday morning, while the men attended a leadership conference, I turned it on and had my daughter watch with me. Honeys, it was magical. Gabrielle and Prairie Dawn open the episode making up a dance (which is also right up my baby’s alley) and come to a point in the creation of the dance where they realize that Gabrielle’s hair doesn’t ‘whip’ like Prairie Dawn’s. They are about to not dance together when Nina convinces them that they can still dance together despite the hairs doing different things. Pretty soon, Elmo and Big Bird come along to dance with fur and feathers doing their own things too. It was adorable.
I kept my eyes on my Honeybee as the little girl discovered it was okay for her hair to do its own thing. Then, we watched a musical number on how another celebrated her hair and its versatility. It went from Afro to braids to cornrows and ya’ll…my Honeybee got it. She said, “Her hair is like mine!” She got it.
Later, I styled her sister’s hair into a series of puff and Honeybee noted that her hair didn’t move like her sister’s (baby hair), but that it was okay. “My hair gets to do what it does. And that’s okay”. And I was thrilled, because she knew that it was.
Thanks, Sesame Street for a really cool video for my daughter. I hope other Mommies are sharing this with their children as well.
_K
