This is the picuture I have been waiting on for like 3 years. COME ON NATURAL. pic.twitter.com/HF8AYpsciB
— gif sommelier (@meagnacarta) April 2, 2017
Last week, we wrote about the reaction from the internet after Michelle Obama stepped out showing her natural hair for the first time. The picture seemed to appear out of nowhere. So in the midst of the excitement, there were several folks who doubted that it was even her.
But Mrs. Obama’s longtime hair stylist Johnny Wright said that not only is it her, the picture is recent.
Wright told Refinery 29, “She just got back from vacation, I think, on Friday. I’m not sure if it was her going to the airport or coming back. But that is her, and it is recent.”
Wright said that while he doesn’t travel with her on vacations anymore, he knows that she was “blown straight before she left for vacation. I guess she got in the water or something, and she didn’t feel like straightening it herself. People want a more sexy answer, but that’s really what it is. I’m not with her.”
While many were surprised to see Mrs. Obama rocking her natural curls, Wright says she’s been this way for nearly the entire time she was in the White House. “I stopped doing her relaxer the first year of the administration,” Wright says. “Very shortly after that, her hair grew out completely. She has no relaxer anywhere on her hair, not even on the tips.”
Instead of opting for a big chop, Wright let Mrs. Obama’s relaxer grow out while maintaining the length of her hair. “I’m very particular about the health of her hair. I’ve always called myself a texture specialist, and I work well with keeping hair on the head. When your natural hair is growing out, that line of demarcation between the natural hair and your relaxer tends to break and pop. I made sure I kept it very soft and moisturized so she could keep her length as much as she could when she was going through that transition. I trimmed every four to six weeks, as I normally do, and that was it.”
And when it comes to the sheen of her blowouts, Wright says it’s all about technique.
“I did a lot of steam treatments with her, too. They’re important because they help build that resistance against humidity, and they keep the hair really strong.”
Wright also had a message for those who were disappointed or critiqued the fact that Mrs. Obama only started wearing her natural hair once she left office.
“She’s always embraced her natural hair. For the looks she was going for and the stories she wanted to tell, I styled her hair straight. There wasn’t any lack of embracing her curls. It’s just what she wanted to do.”
Wright insists that Mrs. Obama was not dissuaded from wearing her natural hair based on what the public may have thought.
“You have people who are going to love them, hate them or be indifferent. You can’t dictate the way you want to tell your story through your aesthetic by what the backlash would or wouldn’t be. I don’t think that’s a conversation we would’ve had. We don’t think that way.”
Still, Wright understands the excitement around the image.
“I do think that a woman of her complexion, with her figure and her hair texture, has given a whole lot of other women a chance to look in the mirror and say ‘I am beautiful, too’ because I have somebody representing me,” says Wright. “Her husband was the leader of the free world. She represented this country very well, and her platform was pure and from the heart. Having this conversation about her hair texture is totally justifiable.”
Veronica Wells is the culture editor at MadameNoire.com. She is also the author of “Bettah Days.” You can follow her on Facebook and Twitter @VDubShrug.
The post “She Has No Relaxer Anywhere On Her Hair” Michelle Obama’s Stylist Confirms Viral Pic Is Real & Recent appeared first on MadameNoire.