“It’s Part of Who I Am”

Why does curly hair so often get treated like something that needs to be fixed? Curly Lifestyles asked Akhil.

There are certainly easier hair routines than curls. Akhil will be the first to admit it.

When Curly Lifestyles asked him why curls are so often treated like a problem to solve, his answer came down to something deceptively simple: we expect hair to be easy.

“There’s sort of this concept that your hair routine should be easy to manage,” Akhil says.

Curls, of course, don’t always cooperate with that idea. There’s detangling, maintenance, and the process of figuring out what your hair actually responds to.

“You have to untangle it, and you have to care for it a lot more,” he says. That extra attention, Akhil thinks, can become part of the reason curly hair gets described as unruly—or even undesirable.

It’s an interesting distinction: difficult to manage and undesirable are not the same thing, though curly hair has often been treated as if they were.

Akhil knows the maintenance side firsthand. He’s had naturally curly hair his whole life and makes no attempt to romanticize the experience.

“It’s definitely a pain,” he says.

Then comes the part that matters.

“But I think it should be celebrated because it’s part of who I am.”

Perhaps curls can be inconvenient and loved at the same time.

For Akhil, they’re simply part of who he is.