The spring rainy season. Day after day of water-filled clouds and week after week of inches of rain. Attempts to blow-dry then flat-iron my dark wavy hair became a waste of time. I hopped out of the shower one day and sighed at the thought of blow-drying my thick waves, pinning my hair up in sections, taking a piece down from each section, violently mashing it between two metal plates at least 100 degrees, continuing all around my head, spritzing on heat protector, then repeating the process for those frizzy locks which refused to cooperate.

Like a lot of women, who usually want whatever type of hair they don’t have—or like most humans in general, who think the grass is greener on the other side—I envied sleek, straight, smooth hair. Over the years, I convinced myself that hair was good hair and absorbed all the advertisements promoting perfectly flat, polished hair. I added my own exaggerated persuasions to the argument:“My face is round, and my cheeks are full….straight, sleek hair will make my face look more sculpted and refined, more sophisticated. Besides, my natural hair can just look too free and wild.”

Some hairstyles do flatter certain face shapes or help achieve a particular look, true….but I just got tired of feeling like I had to go through this arduous ordeal just to look decent enough to face the public. I got tired of feeling like I was so deficient in natural beauty that I had to spend huge amounts of time creating some semblance of it. I got tired of feeling less confident when rain or humidity got a hold of the hair I'd spent so much time flattening out.
I've been in this stage lately of just wanting to be who I am and not try to disguise every little thing about myself. I finally decided, “You know….if it takes this much effort just to look decent enough to go to the daily places I go (work, church, store, gas station)……then it’s gonna take a lot more than straight hair anyway, you know what I mean!?”
I decided to quit forcing myself into some elegant, refined, sleek-haired vision and just be my natural, ordinary, wavy-haired self. I sort of had the rebellious attitude, “If everyone thinks I look awful, then who cares! I'm not entering any beauty pageants anyway!”
I expected people to either politely ignore my unattractiveness or just openly spew,“Ewww, what happened to your head?” I was surprised when people actually said, “Your hair! I love it!”…”Your hair is so cute!” The guys in my work's repair shop exploded, “You have hair like that, and you’ve been straightening it! Why would you do that?! Don’t straighten your hair anymore!” Even my grandma looked at me closely a few days ago and said, “I like your hair like that.”
I'm not telling people to throw out their flat-irons, and I'm not saying I’ll never opt for straight locks again, but this current look is growing on me. I have wondered why I spent so much time trying to change even the little, detailed ways God made me. For now anyway, I have quit torturing my poor hair and ceased burning its carefree, bouncy curls into submission.
I have been feeling more comfortable with simply being who I am and not trying so hard to conform into someone I’m not. I have been fine with not caring so much about people’s opinions of me and content with not necessarily fitting in.
Basically, I’ve just been okay being my natural self….even with my natural hair.