I’m ashamed to say this, but 2021 was the year I fully embraced and wore my natural hair. That’s saying something cause I’ve been natural for seven years. Between heat damage, destructive styles, poor manipulation, terrible upkeep, and being occasionally scissor-happy, I’d never truly taken the time to care for and love my hair. Plus, exhaustion from products that didn’t work or were too expensive to afford led me to stop caring. My mindset was, if I ignored it, it didn’t exist.
I went natural in the advent of the natural hair movement back in 2014. Prior to this, I had never seen my natural hair in its truly beautiful and kinky form. When I started transitioning, YouTube was full of looser curled sisters. I believe I only found one 4C natural that year, and I was convinced my hair didn’t look like that. I truly believed my natural hair would turn out looking like the luscious loose curls I saw throughout Youtube.
This delusion was reinforced by what my hair looked like in its transitioning state. On the occasion that I looked closely at my curls, they appeared loose (In reality, my straight, relaxed ends were weighing them down and giving the illusion of looser curls). So, imagine the disappointment when I eventually big chopped and had an afro. No definition. None of the S-looking curls I’d admired on YouTube for months on end. I was crushed.
I want to say this is where the cycle of hair-hate started for me, but I’d be lying. This started a long time ago. Before I even had a clue what the phrase “eurocentric standards” meant. So although that phrase wasn’t familiar, the “straight is best” mentality and mannerisms were.
You see, I grew up in Nigeria, a country that also conforms to a lot of the eurocentric ideals of beauty. This standard had been reinforced throughout my formative years – the praise for pointed noses, smaller lips, lighter skin, limp but long straight hair.
For most of my life, relaxed hair was the norm; natural hair was considered “unsightly,” “untidy,” and for “extreme Christians”. As a matter of fact, the first time I’d genuinely met someone with chemical-free, or “virgin” hair, as we called it was in secondary school (7th grade). True to the stereotype, many of them were from strict religious households or families where they just didn’t use relaxers; the former was more common.
But, I had one pervasive thought for these girls with their natural hair – it didn’t look good. It needed to be brushed or neatly tucked in some braid style to work. It just wasn’t cute and would probably look better relaxed.
This mindset was also fueled by what I often heard from these girls. Most of them couldn’t wait to relax their hair. Their parents often gave them these “big event” timelines for when they could finally relax it, like “when you graduate from high school” or “when you turn 16.”
Everyone else had straight hair, and they wanted it too.
Funnily enough, most of the girls with their natural, unprocessed hair had the healthiest heads of hair. Their hair grew in length and body and wasn’t stagnant like mine. Their hair drank up and held water, and in its loose state, looked like a very soft, fragile cloud.
So why the heck did I see this as undesirable? Seriously, why?
The “me” of today is incredibly ashamed of that mindset, especially since I’m at a stage in life where I adore my natural hair and see it for how beautiful and versatile it is. I mean, how can hair that naturally grows out of your own head be bad? How can that hair need such extreme (and dangerous) alteration to mimic someone else’s? Who made us believe that our hair wasn’t enough in its true state? So many questions with straightforward yet complex answers to them.
While I won’t delve into those answers, most people are privy to the historical circumstances that have shaped the perception of black hair within our own communities and among people from other racial/ethnic groups.
All that aside, I’m just glad to have finally reached this point, this peak of discovering my own hair, albeit and sadly in my twenties. But, better late than never, right? In this stage, I’m growing to let my hair be precisely what it is—no judgment, or expectations, or anxiety about it.
I still struggle with my wash days from time to time. But, this is not a reflection of my hair, but my inability to exercise patience and learn what it needs from me. I think this is the lesson we all need to be learning from our hair right now.
