Go straight, girl

For some women, getting flowing locks requires chemical warfare, writes Lin Sampson

Chantle thinks of her hair as a disability, something like a chronic migraine. It has to be medicated, treated, taken on mini-breaks, stroked, chemically advanced, tranquillised, sedated and spanked.

"Hair for a coloured girl," says Chantle, "is an issue. It causes divorce, arguments, even murder. When a baby is born all the neighbours come round to look at the baby and let me tell you, girlfriend, they're not looking at the colour of its eyes. Oh no, they're looking at the hair."

They're looking for kroes, a word which roughly translates into frizz and which electrifies the coloured community.

Chantle admits being hostage to her hair, but feels that, in the world of hairarchy, she is fortunate.

"Luckily," she says, "I was born with a combination of kroes and gladde (straight). Let me tell you, meisie, some hair is so kroes it's liked barbed wire, it can cut your hands"

Chantle doesn't go to gym, she does her hair. She has bulging biceps from blow drying. The routine starts around a spa bath with gold taps like cherubs. There is a battalion of shampoo bottles, conditioner, hair softener, straighteners, an army of frizz fighters.

Chantle's mantra is: replenish, rejuvenate and recondition. Or put more simply: eff off frizz

"No coloured girl," says Chantle, "goes to the beach without conditioner because when your hair gets wet it looks like you plugged yourself into an electric socket.

"The other day I didn't do my hair and my son saw me and starting screaming: 'Mommy, there's spiders in your hair!'"

Every three months, Chantle chemically relaxes her hair. In the bathroom she selects a jeroboam of bright pink shampoo from a shelf, and a bottle of conditioner. "Man, you're looking at R700 and I go through three of these a month. It's imported."

She washes, shampoos, conditions, washes, shampoos, conditions. Not once but three times, then scrolls back her hair like a BlackBerry screen and smothers her forehead and neck in Vaseline. "Stops burn."

Then she slides on a pair of pink plastic gloves, and paints each root with relaxer using a tiny flat brush. The smell is so evil a passing fly faints.

The hair is neutralised with special shampoo and rinsed five times.

"You have to make sure all the stuff is completely gone - or otherwise your hair'll be gone."

Then it is time for the rollers. "Girlfriend, rollers isn't simple. You got to know them." Chantle goes for purple ones that are as big as hamster cages.

"Now, watch carefully, you have to pull that hair. You allow slack, you get kroes. It is like the devil, just looking for a space to get into you. You tug that strand, until you know that one more pull will dislodge it from your scalp."

After this ouching experience Chantle sits under a standing hairdryer for an hour, testing her hair every 10 minutes. "If you take it out half dry, it just goes into mince (the colloquial word for frizz)

"Pass me the hairdryer", she commands. This is a weapon of mass destruction, 200W with a nozzle like a bird's beak. "This thing could sommer kill me," she says, as she blow-dries with a special brush (a Conair Infiniti "with ions for intense shine").

At the end. Chantle's little face peers out of a wild tarpaulin of hair like a mouse caught in a bear's paws. "If you have too much volume, you get vet hare," says Chantle. "You want the hair to sommer gooi, to swing."

It is now time for the flat iron. No girl is without what they call "my GHD". Chantle has the new pink limited edition with its non-slip ergonomically designed handles and 360° swivel mechanism. "It costs R3000," says Chantle, "and comes with its own little bag and a special number and certificate and two- year guarantee." Just like a Vuitton bag.

A last shine is added with a tiny tube of silicone, that resembles superglue.

The final bout involves a mesh bag that vegetables come in, topped with a pair of cut-off pantihose, called a swill kous, a bandana and finally a bright pink beanie. "When you sleep it's got to be tight, tight," she says. "I don't even let my husband touch me."

In the morning when she takes off the onion bag, the cut-off pantihose, the bandana and the beanie, there it is, genetically modified hair, as straight and shiny and as sleek as a pigeon's wing.

"You know what? I see lots of white girls with frizz. At least us coloured girls know how to deal with it."