For the first twelve years of my life, I had stick-straight hair. It was mostly because my mother spent twenty minutes every night blow-drying it, but it remained stick-straight throughout the day, and throughout every activity I did. When it got wet, it was only slightly wavy, and I remember looking at models on magazines and being delighted because I “had hair just like them!”
Then, at age thirteen, something happened. I don’t know what, though. Puberty? Stress? I learned what a curling iron was? Either way, I woke up, and BOOM. Curls, curls, and more curls.
I was devastated.
They weren’t beautiful curls like I saw on TV. These were big ringlets that curled one way and then another, that frizzed into a giant, conglomerate mess when I so much as touched it. I couldn’t brush it, I couldn’t touch it, and I most certainly couldn’t shape it. It was crazy, and I cannot count the times I spent crying because, to me, curls were ugly.
In movies, the protagonist never had curly hair when they got the guy or gal. In fact, the curls only appeared on the nerd that the protagonist inevitably used to get ahead. Think of Hermione in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, pre-troll in the bathroom.
I didn’t want to be used. I wanted to be the protagonist.
So for three straight years, I flat-ironed my hair. It sizzled, burnt, and became a disgusting mess. But I felt better about myself. People around me all told me that I had beautiful hair and that it was model-worthy, and I felt so much better about myself.
But upon entering high school, I realized how badly my hair was damaged. I would spend hours looking at my split-ends, feel the straw-like quality of my hair when I ran my fingers through it. It felt awful, and despite how much better I felt when I straightened my hair, I knew something had to change.
I chopped off my hair, a la Selena Gomez’s bob. And I let my curls breathe.
I started showering in the morning instead of at night, and watched YouTube videos on how to style curls like my own.
And you know what? I started feeling more like myself than I had in years.
I think there’s something in accepting yourself for who you are—that something that we all continuously strive to find. We as humans are always desperate to find the next best thing, wanting to change ourselves. But we can’t do that unless we accept ourselves for who we are, and for me, the thing that I had to do in order to love the idea of change was love my curls.
I haven’t touched a flat iron in five years. A curling iron, yes, but most of the time, I just love my natural curls.
Curls, curls, curls.