Welcome to It’s Textured, a column the place we untangle the enjoyment, trauma, confusion, and frustration that may include Black hair. This month, author Shani Hillian shares how caring for her daughter’s hair has opened up a path of therapeutic for herself.
I sat as nonetheless as doable, anticipating the Marcel iron’s scorch because it inched nearer and nearer to my head. For about 45 minutes, a stylist pressed my 3C curls into bone-straight silky strands. The salon smelled like burnt hair and the chair was uncomfortable however as a 10-year-old Black lady within the ’90s, I might have sat via something to get straight hair like Aaliyah and Monica. After each strand was pressed to perfection, I admired myself within the mirror, squealing with pleasure as I ran my fingers via my new hair. It was the primary time I might ever gotten my hair pressed—and I used to be hooked. From that day on, the excessive I’d get from straightening my hair got here with an rising perception that my curls had been troublesome, unmanageable, and never ok.
My adverse notion of my pure hair began with that first silk press. It solely bought worse in highschool once I moved from a predominantly Black neighborhood in North Philadelphia to Voorhees, New Jersey, a predominantly white space with only a handful of Black, LatinX, and South Asian college students at my college. It didn’t assist that the starlets of the day all most popular straight kinds: Alicia Keys with twists within the entrance, straight glossy hair within the again; Beyoncé and Brandy with the infamous micro braids. There was not a curly coiffure in sight—neither on-screen nor IRL. All of the influences round me pointed to the concept my pure hair was not ok. So, I both wished my hair straight or in a protecting type, by no means out in its pure, curly state. On the time, I didn’t consider it as trauma—I simply considered it as making my hair fairly.
At dwelling, my mom usually inspired braids or different protecting kinds as a result of, as a working mother, these had been simpler for her to keep up. I don’t imagine this was as a result of she didn’t suppose my pure curls had been stunning; she simply didn’t have the capability to show me easy methods to look after them. With out that schooling and validation, I noticed my hair as one thing that wanted to be tamed or hidden moderately than celebrated and cared for. In my 20s, I, like many Black ladies my age, started my pure hair journey, throughout the early 2010s pure hair motion. I keep in mind it because the Youtube period as a result of everybody was getting their pure hair schooling from influencers like Hey Fran Hey, and City Bush Babes (two creators who, to me, set the pattern of holistic, pure magnificence throughout that point). There was a giant shift from straight kinds to intense pure hair care regimes together with 10-step wash days together with every thing from pre-poos and sizzling oil remedies to DIY hair masks made with random home goods. It took dedication, and I used to be on board, however even then, deep down I by no means actually embraced my curls—I merely tolerated them.