Part I of II - A first-hand story, written by Brittany Hammond, about what it is like to grow up under the social stigmas of beauty and her path to learning to embrace natural hair texture.
The journey to loving my hair has been a very long, sometimes painful, but ultimately beautiful ride. I am bi-racial, the daughter of a Black father and White mother. The thing I remember most about my younger days as a curly girl was always asking my dad to put my hair in a ponytail on the side. He still teases me about my signature hairstyle to this day (Ariana Grande’s got nothing on me). My dad had 3 sisters, and my mom wasn’t skilled with Black hair, so that left my hair in my dad's hands… literally. If my hair wasn’t in a side pony, it was an untamed afro. There are plenty of photos of my wild hair, and when I look back at them I always joke, “why didn't anyone do my hair?” Their reply is simple, “you wouldn’t let us.”
I grew up in Denver, CO, which is not incredibly diverse. Most of my best friends were White. My next-door neighbor was an older girl, and I looked up to her as a big sister. She had long blonde hair that I envied. I would wear bath towels on my head pretending it was hair cascading down my back. One year for her birthday she had a beauty salon party where we all got makeovers. This was the first time I ever had my hair straightened. I still have the picture from that night. I was 7-years-old, and I looked like an Oprah doppelganger. Not a great look for a child. This was the first time I was the recipient of a bad hairstyle given to me by someone that did not know how to do black hair. It would not be the last.
It was 5th grade when I told my dad I wanted to do my own hair. To this day, I consider this to be one of the biggest beauty mistakes I’ve ever made. That might sound a bit dramatic, I assure you, it’s not. This is the age where I started to see my curls as something I hated. I wanted so badly to fit in with my friends and to have hair like my mom. Not only is my mom a White woman, but she is a redhead with very fine hair. My first order of business when starting to do my own hair was styling my bangs like my mother. I would separate my bangs into two sections and would curl the top section back and the bottom section forward, then brush them together. This sounds ridiculous, but trust me, it was the style back then. That hairstyle worked for my mom who had fine hair, but for me, I ended up with a big poof on the top of my head. While my bangs were fluffy, I would attempt to wear the rest of my hair in a braid. The problem here is that I would braid it wet with no product, and when it would dry, it would frizz and puff up. I knew nothing about hair products, but whenever my dad would offer to start doing my hair again, I would turn it down.
By the time I reached Middle School, I was finally using hair products. Enter, L.A. Looks Extra Hold Gel. This left me with crunchy curls which flaked by the end of the day. Still, the majority of my friends were white, and I felt like I didn’t fit in. When we would go swimming I would worry about what my hair would look like when I had to exit the pool, as theirs would air-dry into a perfect style. I would always wake up at a sleepover with frizzy hair, while they would wake up looking like Disney Princesses. I couldn’t even think about borrowing a brush. No one had the right products for my hair. At Halloween, I had to be Scary Spice, even though I always fancied myself more of a Ginger Spice. But when you’re a curly girl, that’s who you are in the group Spice Girls costume. I also never saw any girls that looked like me in the media. The only women to aspire to were white with straight hair, and those beauty standards were impossible for me to fulfill. I never really felt pretty in comparison.
The most formative thing that happened to me in regards to my hair happened in 6th Grade. I had a crush on a boy, and one day he sat next to me on the school bus. I remember when he sat down I was so excited. I was wearing my curly hair down, and after sitting down he looked at me and said, “what are you trying to be, Michael Jackson or something?” I was completely embarrassed. What teenage girl wanted to be compared to Michael Jackson. This broke my heart. I can laugh about it now, and he has since apologized, but this comment truly changed the way I thought about my curly hair for decades. For the next two years, I always wore my hair up. Sometimes in a ponytail, but mostly in a sock bun (yet another fun style of the ’90s).
The summer before I entered High School I was once again the victim of a bad haircut. Picture the lead singer of a 50’s doo-wop group. I was 14 and traumatized. At this point, I started wearing a weave ponytail (which at the time were taboo) for weeks, and it is immortalized in my 9th Grade yearbook photo. My parents searched for someone that could fix my hair, and when they found her, my hair had to be cut to chin length. For someone with curly hair and shrinkage, that was NOT a good thing. So the woman they took me to suggested a relaxer, and once again, my life was changed. My dad was not really on board, knowing how it would affect my hair, but I begged to get it done and I was finally allowed to get one. I took out my weave, and went to school the next day with my new bob, telling everyone I had cut my long flowing hair. I was too embarrassed to admit it wasn’t mine. From this day until my 30’s, I wore my hair straight. It seemed like it was all figured out, but the internal struggle continued.
Stay tuned for Part II and III...
