Part I- The Early Years
People started letting me know that they thought I wasn’t good looking around kindergarten. In the beginning of my life, my widowed grandmother had a suitor friend that also happened to be a photographer. I was the first child, so there are a million photos of me between one and four. I didn’t really understand what being pretty was then. I just knew that I liked hats and gloves and the color red. I still love hats and gloves and the color red to this very day.
After a couple of new arrivals in the family, and around the same time I arrived at the concept that we all looked a little different, I started to pick up on the fact that people didn’t think I was that great. My little brother had long eyelashes and big eyes. My cousin had light skin and hazel eyes. I became the “funny looking little girl,” a term of affection used by my grandmother all while I was growing up. My cousin, the only other little girl in my family, had sandy wavy hair. I had thick, difficult hair, and whoever was doing my hair seemed so frustrated with me. When my mom asked if I wanted a perm, in my infinite wisdom as a first grader, I said yes! I wanted to be like the pretty little girls on the boxes. I would spend most of my childhood nursing chemical burns, and never achieving straight hair. Right before I went to junior high, I had an unfortunate incident at JCPenney. Two stylists were overwhelmed by my hair, and used the strongest perm available. After crying from the burning, they washed the perm down the drain along with my hair. I wore a baseball cap for the entire summer.
When it grew out a bit, my chemically imposed haircut resembled a mushroom. By this time I was 12 going on 13, and I was taller than almost everyone in my class. I always stood out–and never in a good way. I was very thin, very tall, and very loud. I made a lot of jokes and I laughed a ton, so despite being very awkward, kids didn’t hate being around me. It also helped that I’d gotten into a magnet school, where kids were more interested in shaming each other for not being smart enough as opposed to picking on each other for how their outfits indicated that they were or were not poor.
I wanted to have my hair braided all the time, but braiding was expensive and my mom definitely did not have the money. When we did have the money, I was not allowed to have braids longer than chin length. My mother believed that no one would think any longer was natural–because chin or shoulder length was the longest hair a black person could have. Being in a magnet school exposed me to kids from around the city, which included white and Latinx kids. Junior high is also around the time everyone was figuring out about dating and sexuality. I learned pretty quickly that long hair was a draw for preteen boys, and obnoxiously loud girls with “nappy” hair that resembled a mushroom was a repellent.
Around my junior high school years, my father also moved back into town after being absent forever. It was around then that I met my stepmother. She was light-skinned with shoulder length hair. She was everything that my family taught me beauty should be. Unfortunately she despised me, because I was asking for money for bare necessities. She probably also didn’t like being the only breadwinner and having to pay for my father’s mistakes. Remember though, I’m 13–so I didn’t actually understand any of it–but I did understand rudeness and contempt.
*In this story, we’re about to make the very bumpy transition into high school life. But it’s important to know that all of these images that have been bombarding me for my whole life have shaped my idea of beauty, along with every other child in high school. It’s also important to know I’m sent to high school in a majority white district. Here whiteness is the norm, class matters, and no one is shy about pointing this out.*
Part 2: High School is terrible.
By the time I got to high school, I had a pretty solid hairstyle. I would wash my hair and pull it all the way back into a low ponytail. I called it a “pookie tail” because it was always so small because my hair was always damaged and falling out because of the perm. On special occasions, my mom would part my hair in half and french braid each side. I was pretty satisfied with that. I was well aware that I was not a good looking person, I avoided all photos, and I just understood that no one was ever going to date me. I cried about it all the time. I journaled and wrote angsty poems, just like all the other teens I knew. My mother insisted that things would get better. The other Black girls at school that were in honors classes with me mostly had neat hair–money is the key to looking respectable to white people. Having a professional straighten your hair had a chance of making a Black girl “blendable” in my 15-year-old opinion. I did not realize that those girls were also probably not having the best time because they were immersed in this culture of white supremacy.
Stylist- My mom
I was in a marching band, which meant that I had to wear a hat and sweat for hours on end. This was not helpful in maintaining my hair which ALWAYS seemed to be a problem. Could I even have braids? Was my hair actually pushing the helmet off slowly but surely? These were all problems to contend with privately–and I never talked to any of the other Black girls about their methods. We were all pulled apart by the normal conditions of high school, with the added bonus of being othered. I didn’t realize this was happening in high school. I was so worried about making good grades so I could go to college and pull my family out of poverty. Part of that meant excelling in extracurricular activities. *Spoiler alert–I did not pull my whole family out of poverty.*
My sophomore year, I learned a really important lesson about hair and appearance by joining debate. I’d just learned that I had the talent for public speaking, and I really, really enjoyed it. I found out, however, that in order to be competitive, I had to “correct my appearance.” So between school work, debate prep, and actual work to make money, I also needed regular trips to the hair and nail salon. I needed to look “neat and professional” to win. My hair was an extra level of stress. I knew white adults were judging me based on what my hair looked liked–and that could mean the difference between winning and losing. I felt even more isolated. I didn’t understand how I could say all of the words, and do all the research–but somehow my hair could be “distracting.”
There’s a non-debate related story–I went to a graduation party at the end of high school with a bunch of kids, and they so ruthlessly mocked my hair and complained about my leaving grease on the couch if I slept there, that I ended up walking across town in the middle of the night to get home, bawling the whole way. Those kids weren’t an anomaly. Whether it was offhanded jokes about nappy hair, or just generalizing “ugliness”, it was pretty clear that the consensus was that Black hair was not accepted.
Part C: Welcome to College- Have you heard of a weave?
I did not have time in college to ignore my crippling depressions and deal with my hair. It was just too much. For the first half of college I just wore bandanas. After I realized that in order to support myself I would need to work 60 hours every week at a restaurant, bandanas didn’t cut it. Front of house restaurant work wasn’t just about service, it was about looking like you were deserving of spare change. There was a noticeable difference in how people would treat and tip me when I had a weave and straight hair. My friends definitely mocked me for spending money on my hair–and they were all white with straight hair. Somewhere in the struggle, I met a white guy friend, who was in hair school. I confided in him about my issues, and he learned how to perm hair and sew in weaves. I felt like he was my hair savoir in my 20’s –and he was!
No matter how I conformed, I was still lacking. People at my job made fun of fake hair. It’s fake beauty. “We all know you’re bald under there.” “Do you need time off of work to get your “weave” fixed?” White people thought those comments were SOOOO funny.
Once a white guy on a date pulled my hair to make sure it was real.
The entire time I was going through all of this stuff to make my hair acceptable, people were consistently letting me know they weren’t fooled. No matter what I did it was ugly, and I was still dealing with the consequences behind closed doors–chemical burns, scabs all over my scalp, bleeding, hair loss.
From graduating in college, I was going to spend over a decade trying to make my hair acceptable for jobs, for men (all men–because everyone in society is conditioned by white supremacy and straight hair long hair was the “it” thing.)
Present Day: Fuck a bunch of all that.
I cried when I cut my hair. I thought I was a “woke feminist.” I saw all of these other black women doing it. They were so strong and beautiful. Ayanna Presley was rocking a bald head beautifully. When I looked in the mirror though, I still saw an ugly person. I’ve been in therapy for years now, and often that old programming seeps back into my language. I am just trying to unlearn it. I still think of myself as a “funny looking person.” I’m still trying to be funny and smart enough that it’ll make up for my appearance. I legitimately thought the only reason I had sex was because I was persuasive. It didn’t occur to me that people were just attracted.
That mindset continued because men could never keep their opinions to themselves. I can’t count the number of men who sat me down and explained from head to toe why they didn’t think I was attractive, but that I was worthy of friendship. They meant that they were ashamed about their attraction, so they wanted to make me feel awful for it. They were no friends of mine.
For years, I tried the “fake it until you make it” approach, where I would just say that I was beautiful until I believed it, but my social group at the time told me I was pompous and conceited. They made fun of me for spending so much time in the mirror, but those times weren’t spent in admiration of myself, rather the time was spent in focused correction.
As I hung around more feminists, I was told that I should not care about my appearance at all. Mocked for make up. Salon time was trivial–and all of these women were meeting standards of beauty set under white supremacy without even realizing they were the beauty default.
What does beauty get you in a patriarchy? What does straight hair–professional, “beautiful hair” mean in real life? It’s stupid, right? Be yourself!
Actually:
- It could mean the difference between a leasing office letting you know about vacant apartments, or turning you away.
- It could mean the difference between getting an interview or a job.
- It affects how people treat you. It changes how others perceive you which translates into favor or disdain.
- It changes whether you get swiped on in dating apps for dates.
- It affects how competitive you are in the workplace
Workplace and housing discrimanation affect every aspect of your life.
The conclusion:
I’m constantly working on accepting myself. I love the versatility I have with braids, crochet styles, my natural looks. I’m still very conscious about how I’m perceived. When I see a terrible picture, I wonder if my friends are capturing their personal perception of how I look in a photo.
Are people able to receive my message if I’m not good looking? Will they care what I have to say? Will I be able to make a difference with the issues I care about if people don’t find me lovely and charming?
I don’t know. If you’ve read this piece from top to bottom, I hope you’ll at least understand why that matters to me–and why it might matter to other Black Women.
Apryl-archy 