What I Learned About Beauty After Straightening My Hair

Deciding to start my natural hair journey had been long overdue.

My hair had been so damaged from heat and the overuse of products not meant for it that I could hear it laughing at me every time I ran my fingers through it, contemplating to just let it be.

It was hard at first. It was in this awkward transition stage of being both dead and alive. It was kind of like that awkward stage women go through with their eyebrows when trying to grow them out.

Somehow, I managed. For months, my hair went untouched by straightening devices like flat irons, blow dryers, even serums and hair treatments that were designed to take away from its naturalness. My curls were making a come back!

Before embarking on my journey, I agreed that once every six months, I would straighten my hair to see how my growth was progressing. This week marked the sixth month. So I pulled out my flat iron, blew the dust off, and prepared to be amazed at my growth. But boy, was I disappointed. It went nowhere near as straight as it used to, and my ends were deader than I knew what to do with.

Maybe its time for a trim, I thought to myself. The very next day, I was in my hairdressers seat asking Leann to keep it as long as possible while trimming away the lifeless ends that really hadn’t looked that bad when my hair was curly.

I walked out of there feeling great. My hair was healthy and it looked good.

But before long, there were a series of unusual remarks, stares, and whistles that got me thinking about society’s standard of beauty, who fits into it, and what it means for those that don’t.

“Its like having two girlfriends,” my boyfriend said to me when he saw me that night. This was something I had heard before from men whose girlfriends alternated between straight and curly hair. I was tempted to ask him which girlfriend he liked better, but opted not to.

Before I met up with him that night, I had several clients compliment my appearance. Three of them asked for my number, and one of them told me I look “Spanish.” He seemed startled that I wasn’t grinning at his lame attempt to flatter me by essentially encouraging me to identify with something I didn’t.

It was strange. These were all clients I had served before. They had seen me on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. They hadn’t said any of these things to me when I wore my hair naturally. Where was all this attention coming from?

Walking to grab tea from Tim Horton’s, an older white man said “How you doin’ beautiful?” I note his colour only because I haven’t been hit on by a white guy since the last time my hair was straight.

Strangely, my treatment from women also underwent a shift. The female clients I had that were typically quite rude or standoffish were either extra nice or extra quiet. Why? I wondered. Be rude to me! I can handle it. But then I thought about it.

Personally, when I am face to face with a woman who fits into society’s standard of beauty better than I do, it can be intimidating. I find myself to be either extra nice or extra quiet. Hm. Was I being paranoid or was this an inferiority complex? If so, does this mean our treatment towards people depends on how they appear? How well they fit into the “skinny with white features” depiction of beauty?

For the six months that I wore my hair curly, I felt confident. I felt like I had been a one-girl revolution who walked with purpose, making a statement with every step. But when I wore my hair straight, I felt safe.

What’s the difference?

With curly hair, my sense of approval, the validation of my beauty, and my self-love came from the inside. It meant that even without the series of remarks, comments and whistles, I knew I was beautiful because damn it, I felt beautiful inside.

But with my straight hair, I felt safe. I felt like I looked racially ambiguous; maybe Spanish, maybe mixed, maybe straight white with a tan. Or maybe even full-black, but light enough to escape the dreaded implications of what that might mean in today’s society for my success in a job interview or the preferential treatment that men or women may have towards me because it was validated to me.

The truth is; natural hair represents an absence of fear. And for a lot of men, especially the men who specifically go after a woman based on her closeness to “beauty”, nothing is scarier than a woman who publicly displays an absence of fear. Natural hair represents an ability to ignore the media’s messages about what beauty is. It’s like wearing a fluorescent yellow t-shirt that says, “Yeah, I saw the commercial for that new L’oreal crap and I’m not interested.”

Last week, I had to hand in something called a privilege diary for my Women’s Studies class. We had to detail how privileged or unprivileged we were in certain cases. I noted that the fact that I am a woman of colour makes me less privileged than a white woman. But the fact that I am a lighter skinned woman of colour makes me more privileged than a dark skinned woman. The fact that my hair can transition, naturally, from kinky curly to bone straight makes me more privileged than women who have to use artificial hair, relaxing treatments and the like, to be more like what the media tells us is beautiful.

Despite all of that, here’s one thing I know to be true: I am not my hair. But society sure has a way of making us feel differently. Especially women of colour.

Why is it that when women wear their hair naturally they are complimented by being called “unique” or “brave”? When I started wearing my hair naturally, people joked that I had “tamed the beast.” I still have no idea which beast they are referring to. But when women have straight hair, or straighten their hair, they're “sexy” or “beautiful.”

So to all the men, especially the black men, who felt the need to compliment me on my “remarkable beauty”, ask for my “digits”, or tip toe around my temporary whiteness, thank you. But men like you are a huge part of the reason black women have taken so long to begin embracing their natural hair. You are a huge part of the hostility that exists between light-skinned women and dark-skinned women. You are a huge reason the media hasn’t changed the message.

And what message does that send to young women? What message did it send to me when I was growing up? Because in retrospect, the media was a big, scary adult that whispered this in my bi-racial ear, “Kid, you’re gonna wanna identify with your white side more if you really wanna make it out there.”

It wasn’t until I saw the Charmsie’s and the Halfie Truth’s and the Lipstick n’ Curls of the world that I realized that curly hair is okay, natural hair is okay.

And it certainly is beautiful. And sexy.

And brave. 

A Letter From a "Skinny Bitch"

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Few things are more frustrating than annoying songs that are hauntingly catchy.

So you can imagine why I nearly jumped out the window recently after a car ride with my mom when she turned Meghan Trainor’s “All About That Bass” all the way up on the way to our destination.

My mom, a proud plus-sized woman always loves a song that encourages women to feel comfortable in their skin. But as the lyrics marched their way into my ears, I was slightly frustrated at how this artist, who I’ve never heard of before, went about doing that.

The song refers to slim women as “skinny bitches”. Trainor determines that skinny women think they’re fat. She also assumes that skinny women don’t have booties, can’t shake them, and a few other pieces of nonsense not worth repeating, but certainly worth discussing.

I love a cold hard case of irony. But this is the type of irony really gets me questioning society. The same society, in fact, that people seem to be so hell-bent on fixing, despite contributing to the issues while on their quest for change.

Here’s a little anecdote:

Growing up, I had to drink nutritional supplements in addition to my meals because I was what Trainor called, a skinny bitch, even in my adolescence. I ate a fair portion of meat, vegetables, and every other food group, often in excess. Truthfully, I still do. But I am constantly told that I am envied, disliked, and even hated (yes, really) for my body’s ability to ingest food and not suffer typical consequences of weight gain.

The sad part of the story is that during my transition into teenage-hood, I had heard that I was “too boney”, “too scrawny” and “too mawga” (a name for skinny in West Indian culture) so often that I did actually believe that something was wrong with me. I actually believed that I needed to gain pounds and have curves and that I was ugly.

So when I heard this song, I just got fed up with it all. I guess I just thought society was past referring to excess fat as “junk”, be it in the trunk or any other part of the vehicle. I also assumed, perhaps wrongly, that not all skinny women need to be likened to Barbie dolls. Are we still on that? And lastly, I was really hoping that after the word skinny, did not come the word bitch.

But sadly, women as a whole are on our way to being society’s bitch, if we’re not already there. We do exactly what we’re told. Collectively, women spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on breast implants, Botox, medications to slow the natural process of aging, and diet pills. And we just keep going in whichever direction society’s wind blows when they tell us that big boobs are sexy, but not too big of course, that’s gross. Or skinny is sexy, but if you’re too skinny, you’re anorexic. Or short hair is sexy, but only if it’s styled a certain way…

I imagine that there are readers wondering who I think I am to be criticizing this emerging phenomenon of skinny-bashing. In fact, discussing this blog idea with a few friends yesterday, one of them said:

“Ugh, fat people have been bashed by skinny people for like, ever. Nicki Minaj came out with her song calling skinny girls bitches and now everyone’s upset.”

In a weird way, she made the exact point I was trying to.

Do we have to get even before we can stand as a united front against the real enemy?

I mean, who wins when women hate each other based on these differences? Certainly it can’t be our sisterhood, which is more crucial than ever in fighting off the opposition we face from in our domestic lives, the workplace, and in the public sphere. Better yet, who causes this disconnection amongst women? How have we, for years and years, let men dictate what and who is beautiful? How have we relinquished control on how we appear naturally, and furthermore, how that is perceived and accepted by society?

But most importantly, how long is this going to go on?

The same friend also said, "I still think anyone that takes offence to skinny-bashing is extremely ridiculous."

And from that came a point I wasn't expecting to make, but certainly need to.

What determines how a person is entitled to feel about how they are made to feel by society? Are my feelings automatically excluded from this discourse because I'm skinny? If so, I find that type of silencing method to be very tragic.

I got to a point where I, like many plus-sized women have at one point in their lives or another and said screw it, this is who I am.

My question is: why is that such a bad thing?

I cannot train my body any differently than the average person can on what to do with what it is fed. I cannot dictate to my metabolism what pace to digest the food I eat at. And I cannot for the life of me pack on pounds any faster than you can shed them.

I have interesting and very old news for everyone that assumes the same thing Meghan Trainor or Nicki Minaj does.

1. We do not think we're fat.

2. We are not all anorexic Barbie wannabes.

3. We are not all bitches.

Ultimately, it’s getting harder and harder to feel beautiful. Not to be beautiful, but to really and truly feel that we are. And to every woman out there who can still look in the mirror and find something she doesn’t feel the need to fix, I applaud you.

But for all the people, men and women, who in some way contribute to the never ending list of why women aren’t good enough no matter what they do with their bodies and themselves, and to everyone that ever told me I was “too this” or “too that”, in similar words to Tyra Banks:

Kiss my skinny ass.

  

Opening Your Eyes

I often catch myself watching shows about border patrol.

I watched “Border Wars” for the first time a few weeks ago and ever since then, when I see that it, or any other show like it is on, I must watch it from start to finish.

Today, the episode was about a group of immigrants from Mexico and different parts of South America and South Asia trying to get into America. There was one guy from Sri Lanka, who had travelled for two months. He flew from Sri Lanka to Guatemala, Guatemala to Brazil, Brazil to Mexico, and then made the rest of the voyage on foot with the rest of the group.

When asked how much he paid to be smuggled into America, he said “$18,000.” The other members of the group were also asked how much they paid, and many of them said similar figures, the lowest being $10,000.

Their voyage ended in a takedown by the border patrol agents who capture immigrants seeking illegal entry into America for a living. I could not help but think about what this says about the circumstances these people face in their native countries.

After this takedown, the show featured a mother and daughter who had been left behind the group they were being smuggled into America with. The woman was from Ecuador. After finding a group of people that were headed for America, her and her daughter joined them. She told the “guide” (the person that smuggles them) that her daughter had asthma, and he assured her that they would only be walking for two hours and that they would be considerate of her. But when they finally crossed the border, the guide told her that they faced another seven or eight hours of walking ahead of them.

“I got scared,” she said. My heart broke for her.

Her daughter could not keep up. She had an asthma attack and fainted. She stopped, and the rest of the group carried on, forgetting that she and her daughter had been there in the first place. Her and her daughter wandered in the bush for two days until being picked up by border patrol, both of them with twisted ankles, empty stomachs, and broken souls.

The officials looked up her file and seen that she had been in America in October of 2002 seeking asylum. “The court process took very long, and the attorney they appointed me from the state didn’t show up. He didn’t come to see us, come to speak to us, nothing.”

The woman and her daughter were deported back to Mexico, where they had settled after being sent back from America in 2002.

I couldn’t help but feel guilty, almost, for having all that I do, while this woman and her poor, breathless daughter, had nothing. It really put things into perspective for me.

When I watched this show today, I realized that my problems, my fears, don’t exist for some people, simply because they don’t even have the resources to have such problems. 

Today, watching the news, I learned about the circumstances in Somalian refugee camps. The women face sexual and physical abuse by the people that are supposed to be providing them with asylum, the people they entrusted to help them.

One man described the story of his daughter being raped, in which he could do absolutely nothing because of the consequences he and his entire family would face. Women that are up to eight months pregnant are being raped and beaten on a daily basis.

After an 8 hour shift today, I was walking into my house and I stopped to look up at the moon. I saw that it was full and bright and covered in a beautiful mist of clouds. I couldn't help but notice how tiny I really was. The sight made me think about how small I was, how small I am, in the grand scheme of things and in the grand scheme of the world.

More than feeling small as a person, though, I thought about how small my “problems” were. I thought about how mad I got the day before when I had written a 2,000 word essay that didn’t save. I thought about how angry I was that I would have to re-write it, which really only took me less than an hour when I got home. I thought about how small my “fears” were. My fear of not passing a class, or becoming the journalist I intend to be. I’m afraid I won’t get a new car by the end of the year. I’m afraid of not having enough money. 

I’m afraid of all these things that in my eyes, are worthy of being afraid of, until I really open them and see the rest of what is out there.

Life can be a very humbling experience if we live it the right way. If we open our eyes to the things the world has to show us; the things that the world can show us, it can be a beautiful spectacle even in times of tragedy.

When I saw all the things I saw today, and learned all that I had learned, and thought about that one simple image of the moon toward the end of my night, I became fearless. I was afraid of not having enough when really, I already had everything that I needed, and believing I needed anything more was an insult to the people my mind had met that day; the Sri Lankan man that travelled for two months only to be sent back home, the woman and her daughter that got sent back to a place they fought so relentlessly to escape, and to the Somalian man and his innocent daughter who could not even fight to defend her.

The world is a big place. And as big as you think you are, as big as you think all your problems and all your fears might be, I encourage you to look up at the moon and the stars and remember all that is out there. There is a lot beyond just you. And there is a world inside of the night sky that seems empty except for the stars that scatter here and there. The sad reality is that it is the beautiful backdrop of a very ugly reality for a sickening amount of people. Luckily for you, your reality is beautiful, just like you.

This is just a simple reminder to count your blessings. Almost like you would count the stars. If they ever become hard to see, which they do sometimes, just open your eyes and look a little harder. 

They're there.