I didn’t have the best relationship with my hair growing up. Unfortunately, this is a sad truth for millions of Black girls around the world.
Hair with tighter curls has historically been considered difficult to manage and maintain. This idea followed me throughout childhood until I begged my mother to let me chemically straighten my hair. Years later, the grim reality hit me — a bright-eyed 11-year-old struggling to see this extension of herself as enough.
I sat in a salon chair, unflinching as the thick smell of relaxer consumed me. I counted down with my hairdresser as the white paste destroyed my curls, leaving behind an unrecognizable thin corpse in its wake. I bit back sobs as the paste stung the back of my head, repeating a mantra to remind myself that it would all be worth it. “Beauty hurts,” I recall myself thinking, “the harder it stings, the prettier it will look.”
Years passed as I returned to salons for regular touch-ups, ensuring my roots matched my damaged, frayed ends. This continued until I was roughly 14 when I began to question the routine I’d fallen into.
The year was 2018, and I came across Art Hoe Collective on Tumblr. Any “tapped-in” artsy Black girl today knows exactly what I’m talking about, but for those who don’t, the Art Hoe Collective was a space to celebrate Black femme creativity. The page, founded by Mars, Sage Adams, and Jam, explored the intricate ways Black women navigate life and express themselves through art and, by extension, ourselves.
Through the page, I connected with Black girls worldwide and learned about their experiences, hopes, and dreams. Learning about Black art and history guided me down a rabbit hole where I read work from Black political scholars and began questioning the ways of thinking I once found myself confiding in.
I began to question why Black women, in particular, were pressured to change themselves. Expected to grow smaller and more palatable in every room we entered. There has been a demand for Black women to care for others, making ourselves easier to digest and understand with little to no regard for how that rejection of self leaves us. Black femininity has always been policed (by both non-black and Black communities) from girlhood, though this policing is done in overt and calculated ways.
I began to wonder why we, unlike other oppressed groups, face the most judgment and aggression for the facets of ourselves we were born with. Making the decision to go natural and face the big chop was seen as a grand act of political defiance when, in reality, it was a teenager taking steps to exist in the same space as her peers. While I understand why going natural was a political statement historically, the fact that this idea hasn’t changed today is alarming.
This line of thinking followed me through my teenage years when I read up on how to care for my hair in its natural state. It was a lot of trial and error, but each step brought me closer and closer to the version of myself I am today. Through everything I do, I allow myself to relish in my Blackness and my femininity. The two areas that perfectly intersect are how I care for and carry my hair.
This relationship has allowed me to care for and nurture the version of myself that once sat alone and afraid in a salon. The bold celebration that is Black hair is woven into various parts of my life, and I wouldn’t have been able to get there without the observations made by previous Black scholars. I want this reality for Black girls around the world, a reality that can only be achieved if we continue to champion the teachings of those who came before us.