My Thoughts on My Hair

Fact. On a good day in July, my hair looks like a frustrated lion trying to catch dinner.

I made the conscious decision a couple of months ago to not straighten my hair. It seems pretty insignificant, I realize that, but I had a bigger reason why. I have curly hair. It’s what I call the Junie B Jones mop. It’s hair that’s never neat.

Sometimes I wear Fezes. Fezes are cool

It’s the kind of hair that looks terrible under a hat—probably because it was never meant to be covered.

It’s the kind of hair that will not fix itself. It refuses to. It’s a symbol for me—a reminder of sorts.

Over the past year, I’ve been thinking a lot about how we portray ourselves, in every way: what we tell people, what we dress like, how we think about ourselves, and yes even how we do really small things like wear our clothes and or our hair.

Anthropology researchers have been talking about this for years. I once sat through a lecture on the importance of black hair and how there was a very divided view on how black women ought to style their hair. Some believed that the natural curls were best, and any attempt of relaxation was “anti-black.”

What blew me away was that everything that we do could become a symbol. Symbols can be used to encourage, to enforce, to remind and even (as evident by the Hunger Games Trilogy) to rile up. Symbols are these insignificant objects that we’ve decided to make important.

I was reminded of how when I was a kid, all I wanted was long sleek hair. For me that was associated with whiteness and beauty and even desirability. Now I was made painfully aware that I was not the kind of girl boys liked. They liked my friends that had that sleek straight hair that went down to the middle of their back.

I was thirteen when I got my first straightener for Christmas. My parents had made it a point to not enforce the need to be beautiful in the traditional sense, and at thirteen, I hated them for it. I was obsessed with my straightener when I first got it. It took me forever to do it but when my hair was straightened, I felt mature.  I felt beautiful. Everyone  complimented me, everyone except my father. He hated it, and he made it a point to tell me.

“I like your natural hair,” he would say. “You’re destroying the beautiful hair God gave you,” he would argue.

My Dad and the hair he loves so much

I think that was the first time I probably thought, “It’s my body, I’ll do what I want with it, thank you very much.”

What I didn’t realize until a couple of months ago was that my Dad was trying to teach me something about beauty. He was trying to show me that despite what I’ve ever thought about it, it’s MY hair.

It’s the hair I was born with, the hair I’ve struggled with, and it’s the hair that’s exactly my own.In many ways, my hair is like me. It’s unorganized and is simply made to fall where it wants. It reminds me to be unique. My hair—I’ve realized—is meant to be appreciated, and I’m thankful for it.

And that’s why I don’t straighten, not because I think straightening’s bad—obviously it’s not. I refuse to straighten because I want to appreciate who I am, exactly where I am. I wear my hair, naturally, as a symbol of acceptance of who I am. When I figure that out, when I figure out that whole acceptance thing, maybe then I’ll be content…maybe.