I’ve always had a complicated relationship with my hair. My hair isn’t super curly or super straight, but this strange in-between that I guess qualifies as wazzy (wavy and frizzy). It’s thick, untamed, and sometimes looks like a big, puffy, tangled mess. I’ve always cared a lot about how my hair looks, sometimes a little too much. In fact, I even wrote my college essay about my hair; more specifically, the period when I had bangs. My hair has always felt like a part of my identity, which hasn’t always been a good thing.
I had bangs for a whopping nine years — a style I don’t recommend to anyone. Bangs can be hard to maintain at any age, so dealing with them as a third grader made me conscious of how my hair looked from an early age. I learned how to straighten my hair early on in order to keep my bangs put together. I only used this skill to its fullest extent on special occasions when I needed to look especially nice.
I ditched the bangs once I started high school and instead adopted ritualistic hair straightening. It turned out that whenever I straightened my hair, I developed a new sense of confidence. I thought that I looked way better with my hair straightened, ushering in a very negative mindset towards my natural hair. I had to straighten my hair, which had to look good because if not, I didn’t feel good.
Anyone who lives in Florida knows that the humidity is unrelenting, and this didn’t help regarding how I viewed my hair. Whenever I straightened my hair, I’d apply some sort of humidity guard product as well to make sure it held, but no matter what I did, more than two minutes outside would cause my hair to frizz and return to its natural curl. The only real-time my hair had the chance to look nice was in the winter months when the humidity was severely diminished. Moving into college, I continued this pattern to a further extent. Thankfully, humidity in Tallahassee is much less than that of Orlando, so after applying a few extra products, straightening my hair would actually hold most of the time.
Even though I enjoy how I look with straight hair, I can’t make time for straightening all the time. Sometimes I must sleep in, you know? On one of these days, I was eating lunch with some friends when one pointed out how curly my hair looked that day. I was a bit taken aback by this. These were friends I had just met earlier in the semester, and when I told her this was my natural hair, she was a bit surprised. Had she never seen my natural hair after all this time?
As I thought about it, there was a good chance this was the case. If my hair wasn’t straightened, I’d usually attempt to put it in a low bun or a braid. If I ever dared to walk around with my hair down and normal, I’d be back at my dorm to straighten it later in the day. It was here that I realized that I may be overdoing the straightening. My friends had told me they liked my natural hair, and it was just me who thought it looked terrible.
Now, I’m starting to embrace my natural hair. I’m not planning to give up straightening for good, but I’m making efforts to stop relying on this look to be my source of confidence. While I’m having a hard time accepting it, I can still look good even without styling my hair.
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