Going to an all-girls college with frizzy hair and a physique that gave the impression to be creating an entire lot sooner than these round me was a recipe for catastrophe. After I was 13, my mother inspired me to begin straightening my curls, which led to weekly journeys to the salon for a therapy adopted by seven days devoted to sustaining that straightness. I could not get it moist. I could not get it sweaty. I could not put my hair up in the course of the day or sleep on it too onerous. My curls had been my Achilles heel, and I refused to let anybody see what they really seemed like untamed. On the time, I most well-liked that the remainder of the world see me for who I assumed I wished to be: A mirrored image of the blonde, skinny ladies who bounced across the cafeteria like they had been the primary characters in their very own TV reveals. I felt too huge, and assumed the remainder of the world discovered me to be an excessive amount of, too. So I made myself smaller and straighter.
Then, I went to varsity, and two issues occurred. Freshman yr, I began watching Intercourse and the Metropolis, and grew to understand Carrie Bradshaw’s curls as part of who she was (plus, she was a author, one thing I desperately wished to be)—even when I wasn’t fairly there but with my very own hair. Then, Sophomore yr, I found I used to be homosexual. I am grateful that popping out was a fairly seamless course of for me (and fortuitously I went to a school that principally shouted, “Remember to carry your rainbow to class!”), and searching again, it makes excellent sense that this was when my relationship with my curls began to alter. Revealing one fact was serving to me regulate to a different, and I started to really feel extra comfy sporting my hair pure. I wasn’t all the best way there, however I used to be getting nearer.
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By the point I graduated, my hair was cropped quick and curled on the high (which, sure—made me look much more like my dad). It will nonetheless be a number of years till I absolutely stepped into my id, however as I struggled with determining the best way to costume my physique and be comfy with greater boobs and wider hips, I experimented with what it meant to be who I used to be. Devoting much less time to taming my curls meant extra time for introspection, writing, studying books, and getting exterior. As an alternative of preventing with my hair, I began searching for methods to let items of my character out: I received a number of tattoos, pierced my cartilage, wore shiny colours, and even dyed my hair crimson. In her best-selling e book, Untamed, Glennon Doyle writes, “When a girl lastly learns that pleasing the world is inconceivable, she turns into free to learn to please herself.” And this was definitely the case for me.
Like so many individuals who had been compelled to distance themselves from their stylists in the course of the 2020 lockdown, my relationship with my hair shifted as soon as once more in quarantine. Within the months of stillness, my hair grew longer, and I celebrated small milestones like placing it up in a ponytail. I lower it myself only one time, however issues felt totally different—it was like I had realized that slicing my hair was a means for me to dissociate from myself, and performing what had as soon as been a ritual now felt like I used to be attempting on another person’s id within the hopes that it will assist me discover my very own.
Now, my accomplice (a fellow curly lady) continuously tells me how a lot she loves my hair, and by no means fails to make me really feel lovely for leaning into its thick, wild, and (on some days) unruly nature. I have been rising it out for the previous couple of months, experimenting to see how lengthy I can preserve it with out it driving me up the wall or requiring hours of in-shower detangling. And all through the method, my hair has develop into an extension of my character: vibrant, daring, and bouncy. After years of attempting to appear to be everybody else, I lastly appear to be me. And I am precisely who I need to be.
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