As I was scrolling down instagram and preeing random people’s profiles the other night, I came across a screenshot of this tweet and it kind of hit a nerve as this irritates me so much!

Just like the whole “team lightskin vs team darkskin” divide, how can the black community be so backwards that we adore black people who resemble european beauty standards more by having lighter skin or silkier hair and downgrade those who don’t because they have darker skin or kinkier/coarser hair, like were not all black or at least part black in the end anyway? The worst thing is comments about hair texture usually come from other black women themselves, telling younger girls that their natural hair is ‘bad’ and needs ‘fixing’ simply because it’s not silky, simply breeding self hate.

Now I haven’t got the softest hair in the world, but I’ve been told before that I’m lucky because I have softer hair than other people and when I used to relax my hair I’ve heard “you don’t even need to relax your hair, your hair’s nice” but how does my hair texture make me lucky? Why is my hair nicer than someone else’s simply because it curls/coils up and why should anyone be made to feel that their hair texture is unsatisfactory and needs to be changed?

A Few Tips:

1- Manageability and length comes with educating yourself on how to care for your hair properly, not hair texture. (Part of the reason I started my blog) You can relax your hair but if you don’t know at least basic haircare it’ll still break off same way.

2- On a similar note the manageability of your hair is all in your own head. If you’ve got coarse natural hair but you’re trying to do styles suited to caucasian hair or you’re comparing your hair to people with silkier and looser curl patterns of course you’re going to struggle😕. It’s ok if your edges don’t slick, more time mine don’t stay laid for more than 2 hours either, embrace it. Don’t rip your hair out trying to make it do something your hair texture just doesn’t naturally do.

3- Most importantly if you relax your hair do it because you genuinely want to, not because someone or something (e.g images in the media) made you feel that your hair isn’t ‘good’ enough to be natural. From your hair is healthy it’s good regardless of texture.

Now can we stop the ignorance, prejudice and discrimination within our own communities with this “the whiter your features the better” slave age mindset and come together as one, maybe then we can do more to fight against wider issues such as racism. Rant over☺️

Instagram- @RootsUndone