Personal Experience Essay: Being Black Girl

Growing up as a black girl in the south I have constantly been placed in predominately white settings that have not always led to the most welcoming experiences. A lot of the times the different people I met did not want me to be a part of their friend groups because I was always the odd ball out. I had big light brown puffy curly hair that my mom would spend hours knee deep in taming it into braids, twists, or any other protective style that I wouldn’t ruin during recess. As well as the simple fact that my skin is darker, my nose is bigger, and my body was developing in a totally different way than theirs. Meanwhile, every other girl in the school had smooth, long hair that would dance as they played around the monkey bars. They had the petite button noses and lily-white skin that would offer them a privilege I would never know of. Everything that made me black had no room to be celebrated in my society. As I got older, I would always find myself flat ironing my hair to fit in with everyone else around me. Burning off these beautiful parts of myself, that I sometimes feel like I won’t ever get back, trying to be something I wasn’t. For years I did this, until one day my hair had burnt off so severely to the point where I had to start wearing extensions, then eventually braids. It completely ruined my self-confidence at such a young age and still does to this day. As I’ve gotten older, I have had to learn how to love every part of myself more than the image the rest of the world wants me to look like. My first step on that journey was learning how to love my hair and learning how to do my hair. In this essay I will explore how my hair has impacted my pivotal moments in my life throughout the years in respect to my class, my race-ethnicity, my gender, and my non-existent privilege. The number one thing I hate for people to say to me is, “Oh it’s just hair.” To me it isn’t just hair, it’s the way I express myself, it’s the feelings I wear, it’s my identity. To you it might just be hair, but my hairstyle determines how I will be treated when I walk into a room. Immediately my hair will put me on different levels of class based on what hairstyle I have decided to rock for that day. I think back to elementary school, at this age my mother still did my hair and getting a blowout was a special treat. The first thing I noticed that morning was how everyone in the class treated me on those days. The white girls loved to run their fingers through my hair exclaiming how soft it was or asking how I got it so straight. The first thing my white teacher said to me that morning was complimenting me on how pretty I looked, as if I didn’t look just as pretty on any other day. My social standing in this little classroom of 20 kids would rise like never before all because my hair was flat ironed.  My school was full of middle to upper class white people with the few variations of very little Black kids, some Asian kids, and maybe one or two Latino kids who all ranged from different social classes. Getting treated differently when you get your hair straighten is a universal experience for all black girls. Lots of times we have to flatten our hair to make us more presentable to society to get jobs, to fit in more, and even to be more respected by others. Women with tighter hair textures are constantly overlooked and out right denied for high class jobs when they are clearly qualified because they don’t ‘fit’ the idealistic high-class image. But the reason we don’t fit the image is because we were never in the image. High class isn’t something that was made for black people, it is something we had to break into and revolutionize. Every day we as black women have to work to normalize and teach others about African hair and why it shouldn’t determine our social standing just because we don’t fit the “norm."

Being black and having African American hair is a unique experience that no one else can experience if you aren’t us. This, in turn makes us different and therefore undesirable. Sadly, many black girls experience this discrimination within our own race. I am a light-skinned black girl, with two black parents, who does experience some privileges within my own race. The sad fact is that in America the whiter you are the more beautiful you are considered. My mother is the darkest skinned one in her family and her own grandmother, who was light complected, would make comments about how dark she was or how nappy her hair was because she ignorant to how this would make my mother feel and only considering what she knew to be acceptable. Sadly, this happens to a lot of dark-skinned women. They are uncherished for not looking as white as other women and light-skinned women are put on the pedestal, mostly by black men who build their preferences around the “whiter” woman. Allan G. Johnson, Ph.D. mentions in chapter 2 of Privilege, Power, and Difference, “Privilege is a feature of social systems, and something that isn’t highly valued in the culture of a system can never qualify as a form of privilege” (Johnson 34). The concept of privilege can be applied on every level of class in the United States within our own respective races. In my opinion, that is what colorism is in African American communities, privilege being given to individuals within a race who look similar to who is considered to be highly valued in our American culture. Unfortunately, we see it portrayed everyday in the media. Constantly seeing light skinned woman being depicted in films as soft and sweet with lots of loose curly hair and dark-skinned women being depicted as overly strong, obnoxious, ghetto, and loud with short almost bald hairstyles or cheap wigs. It is so important to understand your privilege and how it affects the people around you. Black women are humans too and we deserve to be celebrated for our beautiful features that uniquely make us ourselves just as much as anyone else. Hair adds onto this dynamic of women being pitted against each other a lot of the times by the males who are supposed to protect and cherish us. Personally, my natural hair would be described as the texture 3c, which can be defined as well-defined tight corkscrews or coils that are a looser than the 4 texture but tighter than the 2 texture. (Refer to the reference picture at the end of the essay). When curly/coily hair is fully dried, the natural length shrinks and becomes denser unlike straight hair. This has led society to create the opinion that women with 4 textured hair aren’t as beautiful as women with loose to no curls. This hair type is often depicted in media as being bald or having unappealing nappy hair. When in actuality 4 type hair is thicker than anyone else’s hair on the planet and the tightness of the curls can be beautifully laid into many versatile styles that when stretched can reach unimaginable lengths. I have noticed that when my hair is straight or in braids, I’m automatically approached way more than when my hair is natural. The more loosely curled your hair is, the more your hair is seen as more acceptable in my society making the whiter feature more desirable than the black feature. 

“To be black and woman is to be born knowing your beauty doesn’t belong to you.” This a quote from the poem, “To Be Black and Woman and Alive” by Crystal Valentine and Aaliyah Jihad. In the poem they discuss how we as black women are told by society that everyone wants us to be everything that we are not, yet no matter how much we changed ourselves it will never be enough therefore it is better to be ourselves and to cherish what makes us so unique even when no one else does. It so crazy to think that the whole time were trying to change ourselves everybody else wants to be like us. Kim Kardashian wearing cornrows which she called “Bo Derek braids”, Julianne Hough casually wearing blackface and poorly done bantu knots, and Rachel Dolezal are just some examples of black being appropriated and out right stolen by other women, some of which have black children who they will raise into black men and women. It is so dishearten as a black woman to know that your motherly ancestors have fought for everything from freedom, the right to vote when they were constantly overlooked during the women’s suffrage, and their civil rights just be able to be black in spaces that weren’t available to them at the time. I remember being in high school seeing the white girls that wore the box braids featuring their best impression of a blaccent. or the white girls that just come back from vacation with cornrows and beads from their missionary vacations. I would always feel like how does someone want to be me until it’s time to be me? Those girls were the quietest ones during talks about injustice in the black community yet the loudest ones when came to wearing our culture.In closing, my hair is an incredibly, unique black experience that only a select few get to experience. Sometimes it can be a headache to manage and isn’t always socially accepted by some people and in some settings. But it is what makes me, me. I believe our different hair textures are something to be cherished and celebrated no matter how different. Our hair affects so many aspects of our everyday lives. From where we are placed on the social class rank in any scenario based on our hairstyle, how privilege exist in the black community and in my life, the social separation pitted against coarser hair textures, to how black culture is appropriated all the time in everyday life and in media. It is a hard journey to experience and to learn how to manage and inform others all of these issues in society but also unlearning these standards society has upon imposed on us. It is important as black women that we be gentle with ourselves and learn to love who we are naturally.