Part II of III – 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. Read My Hair Journey: The Early Years here.
When I discovered the world of relaxers and straight hair, you couldn’t tell me NOTHIN’, honey. I felt like I finally had the hair freedom I’d always desired. Never mind this “freedom” was two hours of blow drying and flat ironing, but it was my dream hair. I also thought this was a good time to start coloring my hair. My parents allowed me to get highlights. I wanted blonde and my mom wanted me to enhance the natural red that would sometimes appear in my hair in the sun. We compromised, and I enhanced my natural red. Now, when I say highlights, I should clarify that it was probably 20 strands of hair in total. Anyone looking at me wouldn’t be able to tell, but if you gave me any time of day, I would certainly point each hair out to you. This was the beginning of my obsession with lightening my hair. If you haven’t heard, let me tell you, relaxers and hair color are both extremely hard on your hair.
The entirety of my high school years was spent with straight hair. I would wash my hair once a week on a Sunday, spending hours getting it to lay as flat as possible. It would last me the whole week, though by day 6 it was greasy and did not look great. It probably didn’t smell great either. This was pre-dry shampoo. There was the very rare occasion where I wore my hair curly, which meant I was too lazy to straighten it, and even then it was always in a ponytail. Except for one lone time; the yearbook signing, and I only know this because there is a photo of it. I believe this is the last picture I have of my curls looking healthy for the next 10 years. I would get my relaxer like clockwork. Every two months my roots would start to frizz, so I would go to the salon, to get them touched up, and all would be right with the world again. While I still had many White friends in high school whose hair I wanted to emulate, I also had many Black friends. Most of us had relaxers. Looking back I think there were only a few girls that were natural. There were girls that wore protective styles, like braids, but the straight relaxed style was really in. The portrayal of black women in the media only served to perpetuate this look. This was the early 00’s, so think Gabrielle Union, Tyra Banks, Meagan Good, and Halle Berry, to name a few. While these women have been seen with different hairstyles, the majority of the time, it was a relaxed style. My high school career was without much hair incident from my point of view. Sure, I was slowly destroying my curl pattern, but that wasn’t something that I was aware of then.
College was a lot more of the same. Running a flat iron over my hair multiple times a week, reeking more and more havoc. However, it was at this time that my trusted hairstylist retired. I’m sure you can empathize with how this betrayal felt. I’m still not over it. I got a referral for a new stylist, and up until this point, I had only had relaxer put in my roots, which is correct. This woman put relaxer over my whole head. R.I.P to my curl pattern. I did not care. All I could think was about how straight my hair was going to be. In college, I had a majority of white friends, all with long gorgeous hair that I envied. With my relaxed hair I fit right in, and that’s what I truly wanted.
Looking back on it now, I realized that this was my way of fitting into a mold I was not designed to fill. All the movies, magazines, celebrities, and social constructs were forcing me down this path, one which I didn’t know I could jump off of until a lot later.
Apart from straight hair, dying my hair blonde was another way I attempted to fit in. The highlights I got in college were a far cry from my first set of highlights. I left that salon looking like a skunk. I had chunky blonde (read: yellow) highlights that framed the front of my face. To my defense (and thanks to Kelly Clarkson), this was the style back then, but it was not a good style for me. Add in the fact that the stylist had no experience with Black hair, and it was a disaster. After multiple trips back for color correction, it was still a mess, but something I decided I could live with.
After college, I started my tour of the most humid places in the U.S. I lived in Washington D.C., Atlanta, and Houston. All the while maintaining my straight hair routine. I should mention that by this time, I had gotten my hair straightening routine down to about an hour. Progress. Looking back, I do not know how I was able to maintain this. By now you may be thinking, “In all those years of straightening her hair only once a week, how did she go all that time without washing her hair? Didn’t she have to wash it when she worked out?” That answer is simple. I didn’t work out. Because of my hair. Seriously. I also went through so many different hair colors. Most of them box dye. Brown, Fuschia, Black, back to Brown. I did it all, and none of it really looked good.
By 2012, I finally stopped relaxing my hair. I decided that I was going to go natural. Not because I wanted to, but because I was broke, and couldn’t afford to go to the salon that often anymore. I did not embrace my natural curl, because there was none. All that was left of my curl pattern were some dried out waves. So, I continued to straighten my hair. This time, sans a relaxer. The heat I had to apply to my hair for that… oh, man! I started to wear my hair curly a little more during this transition, and it looked awful. I went back to the crunchy gel of my youth. Hello L.A. Looks, my old friend. What I needed was a big chop, but I was so obsessed with having long hair, that I just continued to let it grow. Eventually, it did grow out, and my curl pattern started to return. I was actually shocked by what my natural curls looked like. They were pretty! I wasn’t quite ready to let go of hair color yet, however. I ended up going almost completely blonde in 2014. This was done by a professional stylist, and it was beautiful. I count this as one of my best hair moments. After this color, I did start to embrace my curls. Though you would still more likely see me with my signature straight hair, the curls were making a comeback.
At this point in my life, I was living in Houston and had a few girlfriends that rocked their natural curls. Seeing them do that allowed me to see my hair in a new light. When I looked at them, I saw queens crowned in curls. For the first time, I saw a mold that was made for me. One I didn’t have to try to fit in because I was already there. There was suddenly a new feeling. The REAL feeling of hair freedom.
