I Cut My Waist-Length Black Hair, and My Mother Took It Very Personally
We need to take the pressure off of Black women’s hair
I have good hair.
At least, that’s what I was told growing up. Thick, long, and fried straight to the point where it didn’t actually matter what my curl pattern was — no one ever saw my curls anyway. Throughout the entirety of middle school, high school, and most of college, my hair was pressed flat to reveal its full length at all times. My White friends were confused by my utter aversion to rain and swimming pools.
At its longest, my hair fell down past my breasts and tickled my waistline. It was undoubtedly the part of my body that I took the most pride in, unable to suppress smiles when women in the salon would look at me and say, “Lord, what I wouldn’t do for all that hair!”
I embarked on a hair journey to reprogram everything I once thought about my hair: that it had to be long and straight in order to be acceptable, presentable, and pretty.
As I entered my early twenties, I was self-aware enough to know that my obsession with length and straightening was the result of a lot of internalized racism built by over two…
