freedom is a bald head

This valentine’s goes out to the romantic relationship I have with my hair. Afros, box braids, bantu knots, knotless braids, cornrows, flat twists, mini twists, crochet locs, taper fades and sponge curls. We’ve been through a lot together, and today I want to talk about us. We had a rough patch and we had to take a break to gain perspective, and now we are stronger than ever. So strong that I’m going to show you my hair in several photos and try not to cringe at the fact that I’m being perceived via mirror selfies (screaming already!!).

There is so much to be said on the relationship between Black women and our hair, and plenty has already been said, but I want to speak to my experience with my hair over the last three years. To encourage young Black girls to wear their hair with pride, a strand of the self-love movement would say “your hair is your crown”, but heavy is the head that wears the crown, right?

Do you think I’m pretty?

The year was 2022, my first year of uni and I was feeling a lot. There were so many new experiences and hard lessons to learn out in the big world, away from my fairly sheltered youth. The biggest wake up call was realising that everything I had ever learnt about the struggles of being a Black woman in this society were not exaggerated at all!

For full context, we have to jump back to 2020/21. At the cusp of supposed adulthood, I spent my covid lockdown freshly radicalised by the police murder of George Floyd, and watching the most vulnerable being overlooked by our government during the pandemic. So I devoted the next year to reading as much as I could on the intersection of race, gender roles and colonialism from your favourite intersectional feminists and abolitionists. Deconstruction and unlearning was my priority.

Cut to a few months later, my second semester of uni where my priority was being pretty! I put everything I had learned about the performance of gender and the myth of commercial beauty into the bin because according to every elder in my life, it was time to find my life partner (yuck!).  I made my friends, secured good grades so all that was left on my list was a romantic partner, and for that, someone had to think I was pretty, right? 

Hairstyles that were once about comfort, convenience and self-expression, slowly became about looking desirable (again, yuck!). But that’s the trap! There isn’t one way to “look desirable” and deep down younger me knew that, but I was too insecure to find peace within, so I sought external validation. I mean, high academic achiever and pick-me go hand in hand. I was eighteen and I wanted to be wanted, that’s not ridiculous, but when you’re an outspoken Black girl with a big personality and even bigger hair moving through predominately white institutions, it can begin to feel that way. After months of making myself smaller and using insecurities to dictate my aesthetic, I returned home with unrequited crushes, a need for introspection, and a plan: operation change and chop!

Change: I dyed my hair and got a silk press (a process of straightening the hair) at the start of second year, and the social shift that occurred was so good it made me miserable. Pretty privilege is crazy, and I promise this isn’t a pick-me moment because it hasn’t got to do with me or my face, it was literally my hair. Any Black woman can tell you that they are treated differently depending on what style of hair they have. As soon as my hair mirrored the eurocentric ideal, people who previously ignored me, now took an interest. When I went out, I went from pushing to get to the bar, to free drinks with no effort! I was being told that I was in my “hot girl era” or that this was my “glow up”, and I know these were meant to be compliments but it just hurt that the further away I got from myself, the more appealing I was to the (conformist) masses - what I was warned about was confirmed in real time.

You’ve heard of girl math, now I offer you Madiri Data. This is a generalisation of my experience so please add your pinch of salt.

Post Buzz Clarity

Besides the literal weight being off my shoulders, I was actually free. I didn’t want to try to meet the beauty standard anymore. At the start, I was still concerned with being seen as pretty but there was no hair to hide behind so I just had to get into it! The time I spent faffing with my hair in the morning was cut out completely. Wash day was now five minutes max. I took up swimming because I didn’t have to think about how the water would ruin my hairstyle. I started dressing more “masculine” too because I wanted to try on as many versions of myself as possible. I really was just out and about living life and it felt good!

On the other hand, I did see the aggressive switch up in how I was treated (no more free drinks lol). This is a generalisation, but the men overlooked me and the women were intimidated by me and everyone was a little bit confused. There was just a general hostility towards me, and yet within this, I still felt free. The more I became comfortable with myself, the more comfortable I became with walking away from rooms that made me feel irrelevant. I started going out by myself, meeting people who I was more aligned with and who truly saw me. This was a literal “return-to-your-inner-child” occasion. In one of the images below, you’ll see a four year old me with a buzzcut at the airport, on my way to my home country, Zimbabwe. That’s the other funny thing about this, if I was in Zim, shaving my head wouldn’t have been radical at all because that's one of the go-to looks for girls. What was seen as unusual here, was actually in alignment with who I could have been in a parallel timeline. (Also note that I have been rocking jorts and tank tops since 2007. It’s trendy now but I’m not new to this, I'm true to this. Thank you).

Overall, I started having fun with my hair again. I bleached it, and my word, it looked awful at the start, but it eventually came together. I dyed it different colours, I even got a taper fade for the first time, and I finally understood that fresh trim feeling! I missed my afro so badly, but I kept buzzing my hair because I was enjoying it so much!

It’s always been you!

The hair is back and the urge to perform a constrained version of myself hasn’t returned, because it was never about my hair, it was about me. I was so quick to halt my unlearning of patriarchy and white supremacy’s role in my life the moment it seemed like I could enjoy taking part in it, but there’s the lie again, there is no way to take part in this without losing a part of yourself, even if you are white, or a man, or both. The instant I practiced this love I had read about, and honoured myself as a human being, and not as the sum of what I do or how I look, my life took on a whole new chapter. I can enjoy my different looks, and go on unphased by disrespect and compliments alike because the reception of a look isn’t the determining factor of whether I like it or not, I am. As long as the motivation isn’t coming from a place of insecurity, then Black women can and should do whatever we want with our hair! Our hair is so versatile, it literally defies gravity (Elphaba was always meant to be a Black woman for real), and I want to continue exploring the many ways I can customise my look. Since my hair has grown back, I’ve returned to braided styles, I even roped in my facial hair for bleaching, and I got to celebrate my graduation with my favourite style: my afro! 

I could have given myself permission to be free without shaving my head this whole time because we are the freedom we seek. It’s easy to point externally and do the whole, “society made me this way” speech, but what is society if not you and I?  If you are socialised as a woman, you are trained to keep the greatly assumed and generalised desires of men and white supremacy at the front of your mind, all under the guise of respectability. Sure I was mad at how I was socialised, but honestly I was upset with myself. I was embarrassed that I believed a lie for so long (growing up in Bedfordshire is not for the weak). If you wish people were more gracious, be gracious to yourself. If you feel excluded, accept yourself first. Just because it is simple, doesn’t mean it is easy. And just because this appears radical to the oppressive nature of this system, doesn’t mean it is difficult to adopt.

Now I must note, I am a cis-gendered woman so what is merely self expression to me, can be the difference between life and death for our trans siblings. And if I was in the corporate world, perhaps I would change my hair for the sake of “professionalism”, which again is defined by your proximity to whiteness.  I do think it is important to acknowledge that assimilating to the beauty standard can be a lifeline for many people, therefore unfortunately, it can be a privilege to opt out.

The whole framework for passing as a certain gender would dissolve if we stopped commodifying gender expression and that isn’t just to the benefit of trans people, that goes for everyone!  We saw what happened to Imane Khelif at the Olympics last year. Khelif, an cis-woman from Algeria, had her gender questioned just because she was excellent at her profession whilst not meeting the western beauty standard for women, and beating someone who did. She was bullied and berated on a global stage. That wouldn’t have played out if we all just cut the rubbish and existed freely and lovingly. There is no one way to look like a woman, or a man or anyone. Even gender non-conforming people are expected to conform to androgyny, like damn! Just let people live, let yourself live!

Leave Black women and our hair alone. If you catch me with a silk press again, that doesn’t mean I hate myself. All in all, I just want to be dancing somewhere warm with my afro the size of the moon, a grand display of who I am. Go get your nails done, get a trim, go for a run, learn a new eyeliner look, do whatever makes you feel like you’re having fun expressing who you are!

See ya in the next one, where you’ll see far less of my face because I’m still shaking in my boots about being seen in this way.

Love!