I have never been shy about my love for my hair. However, there was a time when I absolutely despised my hair. I remember all the hours spent in the bathroom washing my hair. I can still feel the knots of my thick 4c hair being a more formidable foe than math ever was. I remember the pain I felt when people volunteered to traverse the thick and daunting expansive bush that was my hair with an afro comb. I remember gritting my teeth when I felt the brave soldier combing my hair uprooting strand after strand of my hair.

Unlike the rest of the world that sought to tame my hair, my mother embraced it. She took great efforts to understand it. While her hand was an enemy to my scalp, especially because of braiding cornrows, I can’t say she didn’t try. My grandmother and aunts all had their fair share of war time in the bush that was on my head and they always tried to make sure that it was pretty.

My hair thrived thanks to my family. It was watered and fed. It wasn’t something that was despised. Did my grandmother, mum and aunts sigh at the thought of tending to my hair? Well yes! I would to because it was no easy task. All I remember was that my hair was never fried or unhealthy, on the contrary it was well taken care of which was surprising considering the fact that at the time we had no knowledge about hair types and everything else that had to do with hair care.

All was well in the world until I stepped foot into that awful place called primary school. You know that awkward phase fraught with even more awkward experiences. I came from a home that loved my hair. Although they never new what the hair type was or what the porosity was, they embraced it. No one called it ugly. No one teased it. No one despised it. It was simply just hair.

When I was in third grade, my teacher called me to her desk. Her lips were fixed into an unpleasant scowl as her eyes darted back and forth my face and hair. I felt so small as her gaze continued its onslaught. She reached out her perfectly manicured hand to touch the hair that had been secured into a puff. She frowned. I didn’t know much at the time but I knew that she didn’t exactly like what was on my head. That’s when she told me that my hair was too big, too untidy and that I had to put a relaxer in it. Her tone held a note of finality. This had not been up for discussion.

I remember plodding home with a scowl on my face. When I came back from school I ran to my mother and did what I did best at the time and I whined. I whined about the teacher and how she had told me my hair was horrible. My mother had also worn the same expression that I’m sure I had given my teacher as a response. She sighed and told me it couldn’t be avoided. She didn’t want me to have an unpleasant school year as it was common knowledge that teachers in primary school could be extremely vindictive.

My mother begrudgingly purchased me a relaxer. She got to work relaxing my hair. The immediate aftermath of relaxing my hair was vague but I remember feeling multiple burns. I remember one of my uncles saying I now looked like a cat. My hair wasn’t at all painful to run a comb through anymore. Washing it came easy. Combing it came easy. Styling it came easy. My teacher even started smiling at me. I was happy because I thought my teacher found me beautiful, what I didn’t realise was that that was the beginning of internalised textur-ism. So, what is textur-ism?

I understand texturism to be the discrimination of hair types that aren’t closer to whiteness, especially hair that has more coils than curls. Janice Gassam Asare for Forbes wrote:

“Texturism is based on the premise that hair textures closer to white are more acceptable. Our conversations about hair discrimination require more nuance and must unpack the texturism that is faced by those with coarser hair textures.”

Life wasn’t that bad until a week passed and I woke up with a bald spot on the left side of my hair. I bawled my eyes out and ran to my mother to whine. My mother was mortified. She cursed so much that I thought her mouth would peel itself off her face and go and find someone who wasn’t prone to cursing like a sailor’s wife.

Then I had my big chop. All the while I lost my hair to scissors, my mum complained. She went on and on about how much she despised relaxers. As I watched my hair descending to the floor while the sound of the noisy scissors took to my hair, I couldn’t help but agree with my mother. I wasn’t at all happy about this new chapter in my life, especially considering the fact that I had not asked for it. At the time, I neither felt pretty nor ugly. I was just a child and all we cared about at my school was who could watch a lot of Cartoon Network and Disney XD.

It was only when I turned 11 when I realised that natural hair was considered ugly. It was deemed uglier when it was short. I started to care about what my hair looked like and because everyone thought it hideous, I started seeing it in that light as well.

Short meant ugly. Society didn’t find me pretty with my short hair. I remember coming from church with my grandmother one afternoon. I was decked from head to toe in yellow. It wasn’t my finest moment but it was a day I will never forget. I was the yellow Tellytubby. A woman greeted my grandmother and proceeded to say “Hello son, how are you?”

I was mortified.

Had she just called me a boy? Did I look like a boy? I remember wanting to take my shoe off and beat her with it. What did she know anyway, I remember thinking to myself after we had boarded a combi homebound. I was livid. That day was and still is etched into my brain.

When I was in high school my hair had become severely damaged. It was after years and years of dealing with braiders who had rough hands and hairstyles that ate away at my hair and made it thin. I remember being 15 and going to school with a puff that looked like it was suffering from malnutrition. Heck, it was barely a puff. I remember the boys, one of them was my crush at the time, laughing at me. They asked me what was up with my hair and I honestly asked myself the same question.

Then when I started ‘A’ Level, I couldn’t stomach the thought of wearing my hair out naturally. I haven’t been able to do that until recently.

Uglification of short hair on black women…

Everyone hates short hair on black women. Well at least I think so. They hate it when it’s short and when it is at that awkward phase where it’s not long but it’s not short either. I think the issue or the real object of hatred and ridicule is black woman’s hair. Especially when it’s not made up into a hairstyle. Mind you, a woman will be sporting her hair as is and the world will have things to say about it. Notice how black women are the only race of women that call their hair natural hair and make a fuss about it? Imagine if we just called our hair…well hair?  Imagine if we weren’t hyper focused on it? What if we stopped policing our own hair and the hair of fellow black women—the world already does too much of that.

It’s still very difficult for me to walk outside the house with my natural shrunken hair on display. It takes a lot of courage for me to do so because I’m always under the impression that people are staring at my hair and judging it in many more ways than one.

That being said, the masculinisation of natural short hair is not just an internal perception. It is a real issue society has and it can affect a girl’s confidence in herself. When my hair was in cornrows just a few weeks ago and I braved the streets of Bulawayo, I kept getting asked by other people when I was doing my hair or why I had cornrows. I would tell them that my hair is done and they’d furrow their eyebrows in confusion. How could my hair be done in that state?

So, I decided that I have to learn to be comfortable with my hair in whatever state it’s in because it is what it is. I want to blame societal beauty standards, I really do. However, this is my fault just as much as it is society’s fault. Society will always have an opinion about how I choose to carry myself. Society might have internalised Eurocentric beauty standards but I should be in a position to refuse that ideal. It’s also the whole issue of how natural hairstyles are deemed extremely childish. Let us LIVE? Cornrows have been in our culture forever, why is it that they have a cut off age? Why must cornrows be for primary school girls or high schoolers only or a hairstyle to be inevitably buried underneath a wig?

Femininity isn’t about the length of my hair. I know society has said that it is about the length of my hair time and time again. Femininity is about how I carry myself at all times. I have to get rid of my internalised texturism and I attempted to do so the best way I could. I decided to head into town bare faced with shrunken natural hair. I couldn’t hide behind lip-gloss and lipliner or my jewellery. It was just me. That was very terrifying considering the fact that I have a complicated relationship with my hair. I didn’t have my usual braids and locs to hide behind. It was just my hair and I. I felt naked. Call me melodramatic but that’s how I felt.

 However, what I thought would be a humiliation ritual was actually liberating. I did get stares but who doesn’t get stared at? So, am I the problem? Yes and no, I do agree society plays a role in self-perception and how I choose to interact with society is entirely up to me. I would say it’s all a solid 50/50 toxic relationship.

What I plan to do?

I’m going to partake in exposure therapy. I want to head into town bare faced with my shrunken hair every time I have a hair appointment. I reckon the more I normalise it the better my relationship with my hair will be. Short hair on any race of women is frowned upon, some races are judged more harshly and there’s no surprise who is treated worse…but I just don’t want to be my hair anymore. I want to be a person, who can walk around in public despite the state of my hair and I plan on achieving just that. Wish me luck, I will update you readers in December about how my exposure therapy is going and how my relationship with my hair has improved.

– The “weird” Brown Girl