Forget Hair Products. We Need Hair Therapy!

Changing your hair starts with changing your mind about what it means to love yourself as you are

Dinachi Onuzo
ZORA
Published in
8 min readSep 17, 2020

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Smiling Black woman with natural hair.
Photo: Shestock/Getty Images

When I was growing up in 1990s Nigeria, achievable “beautiful” hair was roughly shoulder length, relaxed, straight hair on a strict six-to-eight-week maintenance schedule, where your new growth would be retouched once “due.” A weekly or biweekly wash and set would help you manage your hair between relaxers, and if you were zealous, you might include a steam or placenta protein treatment.

I remember my first relaxer quite vividly. Beforehand, my older sister stretched my shrunken hair down my back to establish how long my hair would be once relaxed. I was excited; my length check promised hair down to my shoulders, and there would be no more tears at the sight of a comb.

Straight from the salon and ready to show off my new hair, I visited a friend with my mum. I loved going to this friend’s house, but she was always the boss when we played together. Out in her garden, I was required to lay on the floor with my virgin straightened kinks, styled in big twists with bobbles on the ends. But I kept my head and neck raised above the ground in a permanent crunch. Nothing was going to ruin my hair and steal my joy.

We see our hair as something to be put away rather than something to be cared for.

Our regular hairdresser was a short-tempered man who had little patience for his staff and a particular fondness for scissors. He encouraged us to regularly “trim” our hair so that it would be jolloffing. There is a certain kinship between the bounce of freshly cut relaxed hair and the graceful descent of single grains of perfectly cooked jollof rice from a serving spoon onto your plate.

Braids were a treat for summer holidays and an easy way to not have to worry about our hair. The first time I saw a woman in a weave, I was in awe. She had long, black hair cascading down her back, falling just shy of her bum. She smiled at me when I asked if it was her real hair. I had a similar reaction to Ghana weaving; the neat rows of long braided hair without the characteristic bulge at the root could not be all her hair.

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