Hair: A Love Story (Eventually)
I have had a complicated relationship with my hair since I can remember. Tonight I was blow-drying my hair kind of straight for the first time in about 6 years and it had me thinking about how much we've been through.
I grew up Black in a primarily white, affluent small town in Massachusetts, to a Black mom who had beautiful soft, loose banana curls with movement, and a Black father who had a close-cropped afro. Being a girl who would have loved those curls that my mother had, I had, well, an afro.
I envied my mom, and the kids at school whose hair moved. I envied the girls who walked down the hallway with their ponytails swinging intentionally with each step. I wanted hair that moved when I walked, that I could toss over a shoulder. I wanted hair that reflected light, straight and shiny, or even loosely curly, but that's not what was growing out of my head.
I'm not sure how old I was, maybe five or six, but after years of wearing my hair that had grown to my shoulders in braided styles, my mother took me to the hairdresser and cut it all off. I suddenly had a short, cropped afro.
I was devastated.
I cried in the mirror at home, looking at my short little afro where there had been swinging braids finished off with bows or candy-colored baubles on the ends.
"I look like a boy," I cried to my mother.
She put a small, plastic pink bow barrette in my shorter than short hair. It didn't help.
"I look like a boy with a bow in his hair," I cried even harder.
It was traumatic.
Not only did I not have the bouncy, free-flowing hair all the girls had, and it would never naturally grow that way from my Black roots, I knew I had... nothing.
I felt ugly.
Growing up in the early '80s, in a predominantly white area, there were little to no examples of beautiful Black girls or women besides my own family. My mother is light-skinned, and I remember watching her put on body lotion, thinking, that's how she has lighter skin. But the lotion I put on melted into my skin and never changed the color. And her hair wasn't like mine. Beauty standards in the '80s, in the media, on TV, didn't include much Black representation at all.
When my hair grew back, my mother did the best she could to style it. I would sit by the gas stove in the kitchen while she heated a thick, heavy metal comb on the burner. She'd apply a dense greasy gel to protect my hair from the heat, and section by section, pass the comb through at the root to "press" it flat. And then poof- I had hair that moved.
Kind of.
Mostly I think it was in shock from the process, but it would appear straight.
Then one day, my mother told me we were going to the hairdresser, and I was getting something called a relaxer. For those who don't know: a hair relaxer is a chemical treatment used to permanently straighten naturally curly, coily, or tightly textured hair. It works by breaking down the hair's natural bonds, restructuring it so it becomes straighter and easier to comb and style. In other words, I was getting my "white" hair.
Whatever that first experience was, I couldn't tell you because all I remember is being in the car on the way home, practicing flipping my hair, because for the first time, like most every other female I knew, my hair moved.
It was an experience. I was finally "normal." I was finally like everyone else; I had hair that moved! The hairdresser gave my mother instructions on how to roller-set my hair every night, and let's just say that went about as well as you'd expect for a semi-tomboy with undiagnosed ADHD.
I loved having straight hair, but I hated the hairdresser. Well, the experience, at least. When you get a relaxer, they apply the chemical directly to your scalp: a thick, creamy white paste with a harsh smell, meant to make sure every hair gets straightened. Being my sensitive self, my scalp would easily burn once the chemical was applied. I was so sensitive that the next day, after an appointment, roughly 30% of my hair would be matted to my head because my scalp had seeped all night. I'd wait a week or so before washing it, just to let it heal. My hairdresser tried everything, we even got to a point where we'd relax my hair in stages, doing the back first and washing it out before moving to the front.
I would go as long as possible before booking another appointment. I loved having straight hair, but I hated the inevitable chemical torture, made longer by sitting under a dryer for up to 90 minutes with my hair in curlers with hot air blowing on a burned scalp. Going to the salon took hours and hours I didn't want to spend there. One appointment started in the afternoon and didn't end until after midnight, just for a relaxer and a roller set.
I never found salons relaxing. I didn't like people messing with my hair for long stretches of time. I know people who find it soothing when someone else plays with or brushes their hair -I was never one of them. Even my hairdresser had a short window before my patience ran out.
Then, at 18, I would experience the second most traumatic hair moment of my life and somehow managed not to fall apart.
I was a freshman in college, two hours from my hairdresser, and in desperate need of what we used to call the "creamy crack": a relaxer. It was called that partly because you got addicted to having mainstream-straight hair, and partly because of how often you had to redo it. New growth would come in soft, thick, and curly, while the ends stayed straight as a poker, leaving you with two wildly different textures that were almost impossible to manage.
There was a Black woman who lived down the hall from my roommate and me, and I'd watched her relax hair for a few of our classmates using store-bought kits. I asked if she'd do mine. She said yes. I went to Big Y, bought an off-the-shelf relaxer kit, and settled into a chair in her room.
She started the process, sectioning my hair, applying the relaxer as close to the roots as she could without touching my scalp directly. I didn't feel any burning as she worked, and honestly, I was surprised. She moved from the front to the back, section by section, applying the relaxer. She then started using a fine-tooth comb to lay the relaxed roots flat.
She ran the comb through one section and paused.
"Your hair is coming out," she said.
"I always lose a few hairs when I get it relaxed," I told her.
"No. It's really coming out." She showed me the comb, a wide, long chunk of hair had come away in it, as if every strand had snapped the moment she touched it.
I put my hand to my roots and ran my fingers through, and the hair just slid off my head.
"You have to wash this out. Now."
I ran to the shared bathroom around the corner, turned on the shower, kicked off my sneakers, but, hoping to somehow stop whatever was happening, stepped in fully clothed, jeans and a thick argyle sweater and all. I put my hands in my hair and pulled out handful after handful, throwing it onto the shower floor. Someone ran to get my roommate and best friend from home, Courtney, and word spread fast. I stood there, fully clothed, covered in hair disintegrating from my scalp with every pull, while a small group of girls cried for me outside the shower door. I remember thinking how much it sucked, how shocked I was, but also how there was nothing to do but try to stop the chemical process. I joked with Courtney that I'd just wanted a new hairdo, and the girls kept remarking on how calm I seemed.
When it was all over, I was left with a ragged mini-afro on both sides, a mohawk of longer hair down the middle, and a mullet in the back where the chemical had been applied last. I have no words (or pictures as it was 1994!).
My guy friends were kind, offering me baseball hats, which I gratefully wore almost all the time. Courtney and I laughed as she told me I looked like Wayne from Wayne's World. But I was also on the college basketball team, and you can't wear a hat on the court. I never explained anything to my teammates. I was too embarrassed. No one asked, either.
Once the sides grew long enough to hold extensions, I asked a classmate who did braiding to give me my first fat, Janet-Jackson-in-Poetic-Justice style braids. When it got a little longer to work with, I ditched the braids, got a short haircut, and a guy in my class started calling me Anita Baker, singing the opening bars of "Sweet Love" every time he saw me.
I went as long as I possibly could before showing up at a salon again, and even though I'd lost about 80% of my hair the last time I did a relaxer, eventually, I came back for the creamy crack.
Sitting for that first relaxer since losing my hair was, without my knowing it at the time, a full PTSD moment. I kept asking the stylist if it was falling out. I kept touching it to make sure it was still there. On the drive home, I cried with relief.
Over the years, I'd occasionally braid extensions into my natural hair, it took days, but I loved the look. I got highlights for a while, and about every five years I'd chop it shorter, just to grow it back out again.
Then, in 2010, I moved just outside Charlotte, North Carolina. Where in Massachusetts most Black women I knew straightened their hair, in North Carolina the styles were far more diverse. So many women wore their hair natural, in all kinds of beautiful ways. I had Black coworkers with every texture and style imaginable, and for the first time, I saw myself everywhere I looked. Natural, afro-textured Black hair was beautiful, and I could finally see that clearly.
A hygienist at my job with the most gorgeous natural hair invited me to a hair-care gathering she was hosting, all about natural Black haircare and the dangers of relaxers. I started to understand how much healthier, and more beautiful, going natural could be, especially in the humid North Carolina climate. So, I quit the creamy crack. I decided to go natural.
I grew my hair out as long as I could, just a couple of inches, and went to a hairdresser ready for the "big chop": cutting away everything chemically straightened, down to where my natural hair began. But she wouldn't do it. She insisted I grow it out longer first. She did cut some, though, and one day, before a Christmas party, frustrated by the straight ends ruining my curls, I grabbed scissors and cut off everything I could see that wasn't natural. It was liberating.
And by then...I had fallen in love with my natural hair. I had no idea it grew in tiny ringlets, as if coiled around a drinking straw. Left wet, untouched by a brush, it dried into perfect little curls. You'd think I would've known that, right? But my hair had always been brushed out, for braiding when I was little, into an afro when it was short, and every single day under the relaxer, even at the root, breaking up any hint of a curl pattern. "Wash and go" hair, the thing I'd envied my whole childhood, wasn't something I even knew I had, because I'd spent years unknowingly destroying it.
I went back to my hairdresser, and we went red, I wanted hair like Rihanna's. At first it felt hard to get used to, and I was sure I'd made a mistake. But I leaned into it, and I've loved having my hair red for the last 12 years.
I haven't been to a salon in years. Not needing a relaxer and being able to color my own hair at home, has been freeing. I'm not worried about it falling out anymore, and even if it did, they make incredible wigs these days. I do desperately need a haircut soon; I haven't been great about keeping up with my ends.
But I don't look like a boy, or Anita Baker, or Wayne Campbell from Wayne's World. I've got a fair share of grey coming in, and I definitely don't look like Rihanna, but I'm happy to report that my hair and I have finally made peace.
y to report that my hair and I have finally m
ade peace.
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