I LOVE MY HAIR!!!!!

Okay, I already know my brother-in-law Ron is going to look at this photo and say, "What an amazing likeness!!" So let me just beat him to it so I can get on with this danged post!!!

It is so crazy that the day I first learned about the new Sesame Street video featuring little black female Muppets singing the praises of their natural hair, I was obsessing over how dry my own locs are. Oh, I LOVE everything else about the uniqueness and freedom of non-chemically straightened locs (almost everything...there IS the fact that mine are growing so fast, I can't keep up with keeping the gray roots covered!!), but what bugs me is how dry they sometimes feel!

I've always been told that you're not really supposed to put a lot of gunk on the locs themselves; maybe a hot-oil deep conditioner every six weeks or so, and of course you need to keep your scalp moisturized. But in this intense African sun, keeping the color/conditioning ratio together is giving me a headache. Sometimes, it feels like I'm walking around with a scalp full of shredded wheat.

In fact, I was sitting in a Nairobi salon waiting to get re-twisted the other day when I saw a BlackBerry email from my friend Jamila, asking if I'd seen the video. I hadn't even heard about it, no less seen it, so I checked it out once I got home. I'm sorry, but Muppets always make me smile, no matter what they're doing. If there was a video of a Muppet involved in a violent armed robbery, I'd still giggle at it.

But this one touched my heart for so many reasons. I remember when "Sesame Street" premiered, about a month after I'd turned 8 years old. I already adored puppets of any kind at that point, so whenever the local TV stations aired it, I was all up in the TV. And because I was living in one of the most racially tense towns and eras, I think I was also savvy enough to notice that Muppets weren't white or black, per se. They could be orange, or blue or green, or furry, or curly, or whatever. Muppets could just BE, without anybody making a big deal about it.

Growing up has never dulled my enjoyment of Muppets. I watched the prime time "Muppet Show" religiously. I've seen most of the Muppet feature movies. If I could get catch "Sesame Street" over here in Kenya, I'd watch it every day (albeit with the volume turned down low, in case the neighbors questioned my sanity.) And I've appreciated how through the years, that the show's producers made an effort to create patently African American and Hispanic and Asian puppets. Sure, they still come in all the assorted kooky colors like blue and purple, but "Sesame Street" embraced diversity a long time before most other sectors did....and quite a few that still haven't.

So watching little brown female Muppets bouncing around proclaiming their pride and joy about their natural hair was just too sweet! And it's fascinating that the man behind the video, Sesame Street head writer Joey Mazzarino, is white. He and his wife (also white) adopted an Ethiopian baby, and the idea for the song came when she was about 3 and started asking to get her hair straightened. They worried that she was already being harmed by the prevailing American cultural message: Skinny, white, with long, straight blonde hair is the ideal. Kinky-haired and brown-skinned is far from it.

You'd be crazy not to acknowledge the enormous power of "Sesame Street" and other PBS programming to sear positive messages onto tiny brains. Many a grown-assed American can still recite the mantras and songs from "Sesame Street," "The Electric Company," "Zoom," "School House Rock," etc. ("Conjunction Junction, What's Your Function?"). I feel very happy, nay, even Muppet-y, when I visualize little black girls singing along with that video.

Makes me wish I could have seen it 40 years ago, when I was watching TV back in Cairo. Maybe I wouldn't be so worried that my locs sometimes don't feel soft and flowing...it's probably just the last remnants of memory of those old shampoo commercials with white women and their silky blonde tresses blowing in the breeze, with the guy off to the side just panting to run his fingers through those buttery tendrils...

ANY-hoo, since I just mentioned Cairo..........