Melissa Harris-Perry, the MSNBC host who recently chronicled on the news channel's website her fertility issues and the difficulty she and her husband had in choosing to go the surrogate route, is now sharing another side of herself with viewers: her natural hair.
Harris-Perry, the host of the Melissa Harris-Perry show (MHP for those in the know) took to Twitter to let some 270,000 of her closest personal friends in on a candid shot of her without her signature look of long twists or braids.
With her newborn daughter on her chest and full of smiles, the host tweeted how not being on the show meant she could relax au naturel.
"I made the decision to wear the extensions for three reasons: One, I haven’t had a natural head of hair since I was a teenager so I really didn’t know what it would do. Two, I was not prepared to go back to a relaxer," Harris-Perry wrote in the foreword of Hair Story: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America. "I go running every single day, and a relaxer is almost impossible for me to cope with. And three, for consistency, my lifestyle, and my travel schedule, what made the most sense was braid extensions and twists."
Harris-Perry joins Tennessee news anchor Pam McKelvy of WMC-TV, who recently removed her wig on-air to show viewers her shortly cropped head of curls. McKelvy recently won her battle with breast cancer but had been nervous about showing viewers her hair since undergoing chemotherapy. In an emotional moment of public bravery McKelvy removed her wig, and the tears began to flow.
"The times are changing, and God's delivered me with a brand-new spirit and a head full of hair, and here it is," McKelvy said. "I want everyone to know that no matter what you go through, it's not about what’s on the outside; it's about what's on the inside," she stressed. "And I feel, on the inside, I am more radiant and beautiful than I’ve ever been."