Opinion: For years, I have been taught that my hair is like a Monet, alluring from afar, but up close? Not as conventionally beautiful as my white counterparts. As I grew up, I realized other people’s comments had taken a larger toll on my self-image than I thought.
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For as long as I can remember, I have been taught to love my natural hair –– love it so much that others who find it ugly wouldn’t affect me, as if it is an imperfection that I should embrace but never accept as truly beautiful. Like Quasimodo after the locals welcomed him into their hearts. I felt I was a hideous creature that they love despite his flaws, but his flaws are still flaws. He still yearns for change, only to be told that he should love himself regardless of how he looks.
Now imagine if one day he realized there was a way he could “fix” himself. Just for a few days, whenever he wanted. That is how straightening my hair always seemed — like I would finally be seen as beautiful.
However, that self-love was before I got older and the comments on the various hairstyles I had began. The “why would you do that” and “I like your hair curly,” comments about my hair. Initially, I didn’t understand why these comments got to me so much; they were compliments. But then I realized I didn’t ask. Not once had I asked these people what their opinion was on my hair and what I do with it. Nor had I asked to be tokenized when wearing my natural hair and ostracized for wanting to change it temporarily.
There is this misconception in the western world that if you have some trait viewed as different, you are there to be commented on. Like that means you want everyone to make their judgments of you known.
“I’m not a pet, so I don’t understand why people feel the need to stroke my hair,” Maliyah Ross, a recent UO graduate, said when asked how she has felt tokenized in the past.
She noted how people constantly feel the need to assert their opinion of her hair onto her at any given time.
“I don’t need people saying what they like and don’t like about my hairstyles,” Ross said. This was when she was asked about the continued failed allyship that seems to occur when white people realize that they are uneducated but feel ashamed to admit that.
She feels that the comments are unnecessary saying, “I’m gonna wear the hairstyle that makes me feel confident.”
Imagine if the narrative was flipped. Every time you saw a video about how Caucasian hair gets greasy when unwashed or how to cut curtain bangs, you went out and told everyone about the new thing you learned. People would judge you for your lack of education.
We all know how to deal with straight hair, yet curls are something only some people are taught, something that no one is expected to know.
Diversity rates are continuously increasing. College campuses average 45% students of color. And yet, those same students are more likely to feel isolated and outcast –– then add in being taught for years that hair adds to the divide, and it creates a domino effect. When you factor in how many people don’t have anyone to talk to about it. So why are people still not seeing that this is fixable?
The microaggressions, the backhanded compliments, they don’t go over their heads, they do get noticed. They increase the sense of division. They need to stop. There is no such thing as normal hair, skin or culture. It’s time we all saw that.
