Defining My Curls

“I wish my hair was like yours.” 

One of my good friends looks at the poofy mess of dark brown curls attached to my head and curiously reaches out to tug one, watching it bounce back into place. I am surprised by my friend’s comment because, for the longest time, this has been the loudest thought in my head. 

Like many other girls my age, I grew up with a warped definition of beauty. All the female leads and love interests in the TV shows I watched were blue-eyed and white, with silky straight blonde hair. The American Girl dolls my friends and I played with were always pale-skinned with hair we could effortlessly run our fingers through. Shampoo commercials feature women with long shimmering hair that lays flat and elegant on their heads, without a knot in sight. Women on the hair dye boxes in the drugstore are photographed so that individual hair strands can be seen with perfect clarity. Looking in the mirror at my dark skin, brown eyes, and ever-so-frizzy mop of curly hair, I never felt pretty. In fact, I felt far from it. 

These insecurities affected various areas of my life, and some of them still do. I was the quiet kid in my second-grade classroom, so teachers always told me to speak louder when I participated. I didn’t stand up for myself when my classmate told me that I “look like a burnt pancake,” and that I’m “not cute because [I’m] black,” because some part of me thought he was right. I never became interested in fashion or makeup because those things were meant for pretty girls, and I wasn’t one. I became obsessed with exercise to the point of injury because I felt that the only thing I could control was how my body looked. I couldn’t help that my skin was dark or that my hair was curly, but a Victoria’s Secret model workout plan could give me a body that compensated for these flaws. It would make others finally admire me the way I admired the white girls on TV. I didn’t care if that meant skipping rest days for months on end or waking up at 5:00 a.m. to do burpees with a fractured hip. 

On the outside, my timidity towards race manifested as hatred for my hair. It never looked the way I wanted it to when styled, so I never bothered to style it. Instead, I kept my hair tucked out of sight at the back of my head in a tight bun for nearly every day of middle school. When I was six or seven, I remember throwing a tantrum because my African father wanted my twin sister and me to buy Black dolls when we went to the toy store. I didn’t like that the doll had curly hair because it wasn’t satisfying to play with. Ten years later, however, I can understand why my father insisted on the purchase. He was trying to help me appreciate my African heritage and my identity as a Black woman, aspects of my life I had tried so hard to ignore. 

Escaping the shame I felt around my identity began when my efforts to build a supermodel’s body failed. My doctor mandated six weeks of rest for my hip to heal, and suddenly there was no more of myself to give to this destructive idea of beauty. It was around this time I started school at Stuyvesant, where the student body was more diverse than any school I had previously attended. I looked up to the older girls who wore cute clothes and makeup even if they weren’t white and didn’t have the physique I thought I needed. Crews had performed cultural dances at StuySquad, Stuyvesant’s winter dance show, and there had been student unions for various ethnicities. The girls in these organizations were cool and confident, and they showed me that beauty doesn’t have to look one specific way. I began to think it was possible for my culture to be beautiful too. 

It took me far too long to appreciate my hair as a symbol of my cultural background. It took me even longer to muster up the courage to wear it with pride. My upbringing on the Upper East Side was far removed from the Black community, so I spent several years feeling out of place. The last thing I wanted was to draw attention to myself, even if it meant not embracing who I was. However, attending Stuyvesant for the past two years has taught me that I don’t have to smother myself because I look different. I’ve realized how important it is for me not to hide the parts of my identity that don’t fit the images of perfection that were pushed on me as a child. 

My appreciation for cultural boldness came into focus with my family this past August while watching Vice President Kamala Harris speak at the Democratic National Convention. Her success showed me the impact of embracing identities: a woman of African and Asian descent became a Democratic presidential nominee and the vice president of a global superpower. She didn’t hide from her ethnic identity, and millions of women and minorities all over the country were shown that nobody owns the exclusive rights to power, including an insecure biracial 15-year-old living in New York City.

The first time I wore my hair down in school, I repeatedly thought about fleeing to the bathroom to tie it up. I expected someone to tell me that “no, people like me don’t belong in the realm of beauty, power, and femininity.” I was breaking every rule that five-year-old me had written to bury herself under the beauty stereotypes she grew up with. However, I’m glad I never went back into hiding. Rather, I have learned to step out of the shadows bit by bit each day. 

Now, I speak up in class and apply for leadership positions in my extracurriculars. I listen to empowering artists like Beyoncé on Spotify and make playlists with African music. I exercise because I want to be strong, not because I want to look like a different person. I no longer shy away from makeup or fashion, and I got a haircut for the first time in years, chopping off brittle ends and vowing to do more low-tension hairstyles. I’ve invested in various hair products and taken inspiration from curly hair routines on YouTube, giving my hair the attention it has desperately needed after so much neglect. Every time I try a new hairstyle, I hope I can inspire a little girl like me somewhere not to bury her identity and to know that she deserves to be seen.