I realized that a lot of my discomfort with natural hair stemmed from standards of beauty and stereotypes. We live in a world that celebrates light skin, long hair, small noses, long legs, clear skin, small waists and so on. The mainstream images of women who are supposed to be successful, beautiful, sexy or talented rarely include black women, and even more rarely include black women with natural hair. I would love to say that I did not care if people thought I was beautiful or not, but that would be a lie. Part of me was worried about what would happen as I moved even further from what was considered “beautiful.” I wondered if people [guys] would still find me attractive.
On top of that, I had heard it all when it came to stereotypes about women with natural hair. Black power radical type. Vegetarian. Writes Poetry. Obsessed with “the motherland.” Plays the guitar and so on. People judge us and make all sorts of assumptions based strictly on our appearance. I reasoned that I did not want people to get the wrong impression about who I was or what I was into. But after a little more introspection, I had to admit people were already making assumptions. I mean, my nickname was Glam Girl. So in reality, I was comfortable with the more glamorous and “cool” assumptions but not necessarily these other ones that were associated with natural hair.
This is an excerpt from my latest Anything But Him post. You can read the full post here :)
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