Perspective
Femininity, desirability and identity are so entwined in Black hair texture, and my love life helped me understand my own relationship with it
A s the only mixed-race girl at my all-white schools, no one wanted to marry me in reception or be my boyfriend for two days in year 5. While I never really saw myself as ‘ugly’, I often longed for blonde hair and blue eyes, frustrated that my peers overlooked me. We’re constantly exposed to the western beauty ideal of long, silky-smooth hair, seen on cartoon princesses, celebrities and beaming ladies on bus stop ads. So, as a child, I felt that if I ‘fixed’ my fluffy curls, I’d finally look like the babe I knew I was. Clearly, I’d been conditioned into this way of thinking – and the world was more than willing to affirm the way I felt.
Aged 14, I received GHD straighteners for Christmas; with straight hair, my crush finally realised he liked me back. At 20, the first boy I slept with joked he’d buy me straighteners if I’d always wear my hair straight. I wasn’t surprised – our relationship had been purely platonic until he first saw me with straight hair and couldn’t stop saying how different I looked. I eventually quipped, ‘Is what you’re trying to say, that you fancy me now?’ To which he replied, ‘Pretty much.’
Straightening my hair when I wanted to look ‘my best’ wasn’t about hating my curls. I’d grown to love them in my teens, nurturing them into widely praised ringlets that I wore most days. Texturism toxically reassured me I had ‘good hair’: a ‘favourable’, ‘manageable’ variant of Black hair. But the way I saw it, straight hair simply suited my face better and, seeing the attention that it got me, boys agreed. I never questioned my increased appeal either, because I saw myself as more beautiful with straight hair, too.
Then, four years ago, while on a date, something snapped. ‘Your straight hair bangs,’ he told me, while looking at my curls for the first time. I left. You see, earlier, he’d grilled me on how African I ‘felt’ being mixed race (I’m Ethiopian, English and Irish). The absurdity of a Black man wanting me to be ‘more African’ but without African hair was overwhelming. I refused to share his blind eye to the anti-Blackness in this hair ‘preference’.
According to the Perception Institute’s 2017 ‘Good Hair’ Study on Black women’s hair, a majority of people, regardless of race and gender, showed a negative bias against textured hair. Many participants consciously held positive views but still carried
