My hair and I have always had an interesting relationship. When I was little I dreaded getting my hair done, because it was pure pain from start to finish. I refused to wear it out, I wanted my mom to put a comb full of hair grease and run through my hair because I thought it would make it straight. I use to associate straight hair with manageability and I use to associate it with beauty. When I was offered the opportunity to get my hair relaxed at the age of 11 I jumped with joy. I was excited because I would finally have straight hair like my friends, like my mom, like my dolls, and like the other women I had for representation. The reactions to my straight hair were nice. People told me my hair looked nice and the 5th grade boys who were mean to me thought I was pretty. I felt beautiful for the first time in my life and I owed it to the chemicals that straightened my hair and burned my scalp. This will become a major problem for the next seven years of my life.
Relaxers dry out your hair and they can be very damaging if you don’t take care of it. Laziness and I go way back and I was notorious for never taking care of my hair. I use to put it in low ponytails until it started to thin and break. I was applying heat all the time until my hair started breaking off. My hair would be cut low to cut off of the heat damage. Only for it to grow back and for me to not take care of it. My scalp was burned by the chemicals, and I still feel the sting of those burns whenever you comb certain parts of my hair today. My senior year of high school was when I decided I had enough of the relaxing.
So why shouldn’t you tell me to straighten my hair? My original desire to straighten my hair came out of a need to assimilate. I wanted to have straight hair like my non-black friends. For the first time in my life, I’m content with the length and texture of my hair. Don’t tell me to straighten it, because straight hair is not just a hairstyle for me personally. My hair is a symbol of my love for myself and the journey it took to do so. So when you constantly tell me to straighten it, you make me uncomfortable. Especially if you haven’t uttered a nice word about my coiled tresses. Don’t call me sensitive or easily offended, it took me a long time to get to this point of self-love. Not every natural has the same story and not every black woman with straight hair hate themselves. Just be careful what you say when you’re talking about black hair. Because we are criticized for rocking our afros, for wearing our hair straight, and for wearing 22 inches of Malaysian hair. We really don’t need anyone else’s opinion on how we should wear our hair.
