Play with Luisa, the only one
Black girl from my classroom “
Bad girl romance.
Raul Ferrer
As a black woman, I grew up believing that my natural hair was ugly. I will never forget that time someone told me, as an answer to my question about why I had to comb my hair if my white friend had disheveled too, that white women do look good without combing.
Unforgettable also that first outing with that boy, when a torrential downpour erased all traces of the iron that had passed through my hair before leaving.
Crazy because I was fifteen to straighten my hair, influenced by a whole series of events and comments that made me believe that I really looked prettier like that.
I started dating, I became a girl, I forgot how it felt and I saw my hair and I always had a doubt spinning in my head. What would it feel like to have natural “beautiful” hair, not to have to go to a hairdresser every two months? And how you suffer in the hairdresser! The potash (potassium hydroxide) is the most popular method to permanently stretch hair, due to its price and effectiveness, but it is at the same time very harmful and even painful, it was in my case.
It is a product that when it comes into contact with the skull for seconds, burns, burns and one endures because “to show off you have to suffer”, and the pillow woke up stained with humor and blood.
Letting your hair grow natural, going back to the roots, is a difficult process that goes much further than just having a person tell you that curly hair looks good on you. It implies breaking all the schemes, all the stereotypes of beauty and beliefs that have prevailed for centuries; It implies a self-discovery, knowing your hair from scratch, taking into account that many of us went from having mom comb our hair to having suddenly straight hair, when we made the decision not to use more chemicals, we practically do not know each other.
It implies, and in my opinion is the most difficult, acceptance. My hair is cute, my hair is not casual, it is not tousled, and it is definitely not a thirteen-plant lice, as someone once told me.
A lot of willpower, living with the stares, for better or for worse, negative comments, mockery, but also the people who support you, the girls who tell you that they like you, that you are their paradigm, and they ask you how you did and how you feel and you answer them:
-It’s freedom.
