“As my self-love increased, so did my curls,” she says.
It’s a neat way of describing a relationship with hair that took years to arrive at. Growing up and attending white private schools, she remembers straight hair being the default. “My go-to for a long time was relaxed, straightened hair,” she tells Curly Lifestyles.
The results weren’t particularly convincing. Her hair became brittle and dry—“looking horrible,” as she puts it—but it wasn’t until university that things really began to change.
Suddenly, she was spending more time around Black women wearing their hair naturally. She watched them embrace their curls and started reconsidering her own.
“I realized that my curls were nothing to be ashamed of,” she says.
These days, there’s no relaxer in sight. “Now I rock a fro.”
Beside her, her friend has had an entirely different introduction to natural hair. Growing up in Nigeria, she remembers relaxed hair being the norm. Then came boarding school, where she shaved her hair for years.
“This is the first time I’m having natural hair,” she says.
So, for now, she’s figuring it out as she goes—learning her texture, what works for it, and what having her natural hair even looks like for her.
She calls the whole thing a “discovery.”
One woman arrived at her curls after years of straightening them. The other is meeting hers for the first time.
Both are getting acquainted with the hair that was there all along.