My Message to Curly Girls: Embrace Your Curls
Late into October of 2018, I was done with my hair.
I might identify as a 2B or 2C type of curly and I had recently moved to a part of the country where drinking water was the only kind of soft water available.
I remember the feeling after the first shower. The sticky, hard water touched my hair and left it clumped afterwards. I had tried shampooing in desperation a few days later. Tried oiling before a bath, after a bath and in so many strange and absurd combinations that a month into this lifestyle had left me with horrible, uncouth hair that was impossible to comb.
I had to work hard to get a comb through my hair and this left me pulling at my hair with a brush every morning for a whole hour, before I could tame it and leave for college. This also meant a dangerous amount of hair fall.
In two months, I’d had enough. I called up my mom and told her that I was either chopping all my hair off or I needed to get a hair treatment done. But hair treatments were expensive.
After a lot of coaxing and complaining I finally managed to get a hair smoothening done. It was a wonderful decision at the time. Combing my hair barely took two minutes and I could tie my hair in ways I’d never before considered. People complimented my new hair. It looked natural, apparently. That was also when I’d first started using hair conditioner as part of a compulsory hair care routine.
Half a year ahead, my curly roots started showing up and I realised that unless I spent more money on my hair, I really could not keep it straight. I found out with some sourness that I had subconsciously started hating on something that was very much an inescapable part of me.
I had subconsciously started hating on something that was very much an inescapable part of me.
One full year after the smoothening process, my curly hair was back in its full glory. After a lot of internal dilemma and undecidedness, I chose to accept my hair the way it was. I went online and discovered this whole community of curly girls trying to make lives for other curly girls better.
I started checking out curly hair-care methods. I dumped my hairbrush for a wide-toothed comb and started conditioning more often — it was magical. My hair tangled up lesser than before. And I could leave my hair open the whole day without having to face horrible consequences.
It felt like freedom. Guiltless freedom.
It was followed by the realisation that after I’d gotten my hair smoothened, I had been feeling like an impostor all along. That I was fooling people when they said I looked good. That they wouldn’t think the same way if my hair was curly.
I watched the roots grow longer, until the curly bits reached all the way to my shoulder. Someone asked me out around this time, and I was jerked awake.
I’m beautiful even with my hair curly.
People asked me if I was getting my hair done again. There were people asking me about my experience with smoothening because they had plans themselves to get it done. In the matter of a few months, my full-on thumbs-up recommendation for smoothening went to an apologetic smile and a heartfelt phrase, “If it isn’t absolutely unavoidable, I’d just ask you to embrace your curly hair”.
Because here’s the thing: I was convinced by popular media that pretty girls came with silky smooth hair. Hair oil and shampoo ads constantly employ women with needle straight hair that bounces and dances in the wind as they prance in the sun. I thought this meant that my hair was something that needed to be worked on and altered with chemicals.
Sure, if you live in a humid location, maintaining curly hair is a huge task and you end up having more bad hair days than good ones, and sometimes good hair days are a myth. But you’ll end up facing the curly roots of your hair one fine morning and you’ll want to hide it even more aggressively than the first time. You’ll soon be ashamed to go back to the full-on curly girl look. You’ll get into this poisonous cycle of self-hate because your hair isn’t naturally straight the way you like it.
I decided to face my self-hate.
I stubbornly refused to let an iron do its thing on my hair for two years and I’ve realised that I like this better. When someone compliments me, I now fully appreciate myself.
I started actively protecting my hair and loving it, keeping the curls tended. Eventually, they loved me back. I don’t let my hair become what I am anymore. Besides, straight really wasn’t my thing in the first place *winks*.
