By Felicia C. Sullivan
Few of my friends know that I have curly hair, really curly hair. And I’m not talking about the tousled, free-spirited locks that flounce down red carpets, or the shiny curls roller-set to perfection: the kind of curl every girl with pin-straight hair covets. Rather, I’m alluding to the thick, kinky variety – the tempestuous hair no one wants. The kind of tight kink that gave Dominican women in tiny Bronx salons a workout, the kind that keeps you trapped in a hothouse bathroom for hours with tools, products and towels – all in an effort to look like the pretty girls in magazines. My hair (read: the black forest), is that curly, that thick, that much. And when you grow up in a suburb where everyone is preened and blond and every girl dreams of being kick-team captain, and then when you attend a college filled with the people you thought you’d left behind, a part of you simply wants to blend in. A part of you wants that hair as straight and shiny as it could possibly, or unnaturally, be.
For two decades, I endured everything from wretched, ammonia-laden chemical treatments that caused my hair to fall out in clumps to scalp burns from cheap blow dryers to ignorant shampoo girls’ snide comments to expensive hour-long blowouts – all for the sake of hiding my textured hair and walking outside with straight, luminous locks. In between blowouts, I’d wrap my hair in a tight bun, cover any sight of frizz or curl with headbands, pins, and clips. When my stylist announced that she was going away on holiday in the middle of my book tour, I collapsed into tears in the middle of the street. During a two-year relationship, I never dared to have my partner see me with wet hair. My hair has always been my Achilles heel, so the idea of wearing it natural, letting it curl, was inconceivable. I feared the humidity, temperature variations, the unruliness, and the inevitable Chia-pet comparisons! However, over the past few years I’ve dealt with my issues of identity and self-esteem, from which my hair was its unfortunate victim, and have to come realize that the act of blending in would deny my friends and loved ones access to everything (the good, the bad, and the curl) that makes me undeniably me.
