My hair extends about five inches in all directions from my scalp in a rounded, curly afro. Since Sunday night, I’ve been trying to figure out what I’m going to do to make it fit under my foam cowboy hat for the senior Sing Song.

I’ve thought of putting it in a bun, but it’s not long enough in the back to put on top of my head. I’ve thought about braiding it like the rest of the ladies in my act, but I’d have to detangle it, which would take about 30 minutes, and use a ton of product to make it manageable. Also, I don’t know how to braid my hair. Not many of my friends know how to braid my hair, and I don’t want to pay to visit a professional for a hairstyle I’ll wear only for a few days.

Straightening my hair would take about two hours, so that’s out of the question because no one has an extra two hours during the week of Sing Song.

This issue has been weighing on my mind since Sunday when our section leader “suggested” we braid our hair to fit the country theme. What he doesn’t understand is that this natural girl has a hard time doing anything to her hair outside of a few twists and”¦well, that’s it.

I’m grateful I got a four-day warning, but now it’s the night of our first full dress rehearsal and I’m still at a loss. Last night I experimented with my hair and managed to do this twist-y thing that worked, but I could only do one side. Why I couldn’t do the other is beyond me.

Back to the drawing board.

If I could pin my hat to my head, I would, but a mid-act costume change has eliminated that idea. I’m sure our section leader didn’t think I’d have this hard of a time figuring out how to get a hat to fit over my curls – I’ll admit, my hair looks soft and malleable, but the latter is not true.

And it takes a week’s worth of not washing my hair to get it this soft, believe it or not. So, I won’t be washing my hair until Sunday night because I’ll probably be way too tired to do it after the final show Saturday. Yes, that’ll mean I’ve gone two weeks without washing my hair. (To be honest, that’s just an estimate. I can’t remember the last time I washed it.)

Many black women with natural hair go this long without washing their hair. I’ve come across many blogs and websites by women who say they only wash their hair once every 1-2 weeks. There’s no need to do it more than that because of the structure of our hair; our scalps don’t produce as much oil as people with other types of hair. And if you don’t work out or sweat regularly, it’s not a big deal to wait a little longer between washes.

There are a lot of things about my naturally large hair that people don’t realize when they ask if they can pet it or tell me they wish their hair looked like mine. They don’t realize how much work it takes to get it to fit under a cowboy hat.

So, the next time you see someone with frizzy hair like mine, think twice before you “suggest” a hairstyle I should try.