Growing up, I always wanted to look like the other girls in my class – white, mostly blonde – you get the picture. But that’s not exactly something I could just wake up and change about myself. One thing I could do to “fit in” though, was straighten my hair.
One of the first times I did this, I received many compliments on how it looked. Was this what I wanted? The short answer is yes. I was glad to be noticed and that people liked the way I looked.
But it was more complicated than that. Hearing comments like “Your hair looks like so good! You should straighten it more often” just confirmed the fear I already had – I look better when I can look like everyone else. Change my appearance to fit in to what society said was beautiful. I fell right into the trap too – continued to straighten my hair which led to heat damage, just anything to not feel like an outcast at my predominantly white schools.
It wasn’t until my junior year of high school that I began to learn how to take care of my curls and embrace how I looked with them. This didn’t lead to me never straightening my hair again, it just meant I no longer felt like it was necessary to do to look pretty. This would go on to become one of the first of many lessons I would learn in navigating growing up as a person of color in a white washed society.
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