Search Results: Maya Washington
Maya is a YouTube star, involuntary curly hair guru, and an overall inspiring woman whom, we’ll just come out and say it, we girl crush on pretty hard in the NaturallyCurly offices. This is the second in a three-part series that Maya is writing for us, in which she shares the reasoning, the experience, and the reaction to shaving her curly hair off. To read the first part of this series (and a before picture!”>, click here.
The Shave
I didn’t think much about my shave until the morning of. I was nervous about how I’d look without my hair live on YouTube for the world to see. So I did what I always do when I’m fearful, scared, or nervous and just prayed. “It’s not a big deal Maya. You are not your hair.” During my shave I was nervous as hell. I think mainly because I was doing it live in front of thousands of people. I’d like to think it would have been less nerve-wracking had I done it alone.
My cousin, Jeigh was shaving my head for me and we sectioned it off because I planned on donating my hair to Locks of Love, which is a charity who makes and provide wigs to children who suffer from clinical hair loss. Once he finished cutting one side of my hair I saw what I looked like with a mini fro and immediately felt less attractive. “What am I doing?!“ He continued to buzz half of my hair off without me seeing anything.
MORE: Why I Shaved My Curly Hair Off | Shameless Maya
I went through so many emotions and thoughts. A combination of not being attractive along with my personal life since quietly out of the public eye I was going through a divorce with my husband. Once I saw the initial shaved side simply put I was shocked. I no longer recognized my reflection. Once we started cutting off the sections on the other side I all of a sudden was over it all. I was no longer scared, shocked, choced up. I even started shaving my own hair, before handing it back to my cousin. By the end of the shave I overcame my fears of inadequacy.
I did the thing that scared me and it no longer had a grip on me. For the rest of the day and few days following I completely forgot my hair was gone most of the time. It wasn’t until I saw my reflection where I kept saying to myself “who is that person”. I really couldn’t recognize myself. I’ve had shoulder length hair for 10 years and have never seen myself without hair. So visually I did not recognize myself. I even completely forgot I shaved my hair the next morning and went to brush my teeth and didn’t recognize my reflection! It really is a trip. It’s a completely new experience to self-discovery. Every week I am seeing myself transform because my hair is growing. And every week I’m like, “what is it going to do now?” It’s really interesting.
Watch the Video
Watch the full-length video of Maya shaving her hair live.NaturallyCurly Reacts
ShamelessMaya: Why I Shaved My Hair
I’m Maya aka Shameless Maya and my YouTube channel started out as a social media experiment on what would happen if I shamelessly promoted myself for 1 year. It sounds straight forward enough, but there is a lot of fear and anxiety attached to this for those of us who aren’t comfortable talking about ourselves, let alone “promoting” who we are and what we do.Shameless in other words means fearless and having the courage to share yourself with the world.
Because I had no idea how to even self-promote, my earlier videos consisted of interviews asking people their perspective on self-promotion and how to do it. Although I wanted to research and find out more and share this with my viewers, they seemed less interested in what I had to say, and instead wanted to know about my curly hair. At this point I had no idea how big the curly hair market was, and after many requests and much harassment I finally uploaded my naturally curly hair routine. The views for this particular video trumped all my other videos combined and got me attention. I was featured in Essence Top Natural Hair Instagrammers, The Good Hair Blog, and La Coco Bella Blog.
I thought that one curly video would be enough to answer questions so that I could move on and get back into my journey of “shameless self promotion.” But the requests kept pouring in. “How do you sleep with your hair at night? What products do you use? Can you show me how you did that hair style? Wait, I love your makeup here, can you show me how you did that?” I could not believe it! Nobody seemed to care about the message of self-promotion and how imperative it is in today’s society. I had to sit down and reevaluate my channel strategy.
“Shameless” is all overcoming your fears and sharing that with as many people as possible. And to a certain extent that means being popular, as discussed in my video with fellow curly, Andrea Lewis. If making videos about my curly hair would get me attention, then maybe I should make a couple more but add my creative spin on it. Outside of YouTube I’m a photographer and actor, so why not add my technique here on YouTube? Anyways 12 months later I’ve made a handful of curly videos, along with makeup, and transformation videos.
In this process I discovered how many women out there had a hard time accepting their hair and felt that this alone defined beauty. That may not have been the case but the cries for help concerning hair alone was shocking to me. The length checks, the envy, the secrets to beautiful hair just became overwhelming. I am not my hair is what I kept repeating to myself. Beauty is not in your hair alone! It’s from within. We as woman and even men place too much importance and self worth, who we are, our femininity in our hair. And this whole shameless journey of mine is about overcoming my shame, embarrassment of who I am and what I have to offer, not my hair!
So what would happen if I didn’t have it on my head anymore? What would happen if this hair that got me all this attention was no longer there to overshadow my message. I am not my hair, my hair is not me. Yes it is a part of me but only a part. The thought was scary and forced me to reevaluate the idea of beauty. I really just wanted to prove to myself I am enough and I don’t need my hair. There are people out there that do though.
I’m shameless, I’m fearless, I’m gonna chop it all off. And why not do it live on my channel on its one-year anniversary? This was the ultimate act of shamelessness I could think of in which morally, I wasn’t doing anything wrong or compromising. So I did.
To see Maya explain the chain of events that lead up to her shave, watch her video here:
