I Love My Natural, Curly Hair Pt. 1
How I learnt to embrace my natural curls
I always remember having lots of hair as a child and I always remember people making remarks about it. There was only one child in my class at school who was repeatedly berated for not tying up their hair — me. Other girls wore their long hair down but they were almost never told to tie up their hair as it was limp and straight. I ended up hating my curls, not because of how they looked, but because of how I was treated because I had curly hair.
Last year was the year I made all the bad hair decisions I am never going to make again. For a reason I am profoundly ashamed of (thinking it would be more attractive to men), I decided to go as blonde as I could go. It looked great for, like, two weeks. Then all the dye washed out. It looked and felt like straw. Except when it was wet. When it was wet, my hair felt sticky and I could only get it to feel good by drying it, straightening it, and oiling it. I hated it.
Having had dark hair for over thirty years, I couldn’t get over the dissonance at my appearance. I looked like a pale imitation of every Basic on Instagram. Not only that, but because of how fast my hair grows I would have to be in the salon for hours every other week to keep it looking that way. It was then that I realised my appetite for that level of hair maintenance and expense was non-existent.
I ended up colour matching my hair back to my roots and cutting about six inches of damaged hair off. After this, I was done. I realised I had straightened my hair twice a week for almost ten years. The more I had done to my hair the worse it looked and felt. So I stopped. I stopped all of it. Encouraged by a wonderful curly-haired colleague at work, I started following the Curly Girl Method and I haven’t looked back since.
When I was a young woman I didn’t see a lot of other women who looked like me due to being the product of a mixed marriage and living in a small community. I wish the online community of YouTubers and curly-haired Instagram beauty bloggers had existed when I was in my teens. Everybody talks about the toxicity of social media — and they make valid criticisms — but social media has been a hugely positive thing in this respect.
There are still things that bug me. The perception that annoys me the most is that curly hair is messy or dirty. My hair is always clean, well-groomed and it is curly because I want it curly. Those perceptions are other people’s problems. Nature isn’t always right. There’s tweezing and shaving that I don’t intend to give up anytime soon. But as for the hair on my head, working with what I was given, rather than against it, has been a winning formula for me.
Thank you for reading — be sure to check out Part 2 if you’re interested in the specifics of about how I care for my curly hair now.
Thank you for reading — I hope you found my thoughts interesting. You can find links to my other work here: https://linktr.ee/sayde.scarlett
