I didn’t know I had curly hair...

In my hair excitement , I was raveling new vocabulary like a whiz kid… “humectant, cones surfactant.” I kept rambling about the new excitement over my hair and trying new things and seeing new results and that phrase came out. My friend who is Latina with very straight hair said through her laughter “What do you mean you didn’t know you had curly hair?” I had to go through my mind to try to explain how a hair and braid guru/enthusiast could go her whole life and not know there were curls in her afro. I couldn’t. I could not explain my ignorance. I couldn’t explain that that ignorance had been passed down and was widely spread. After she went home I began thinking about all of the things that prevented me from seeing my texture.

1. Washing my hair in the sink
2. Hardly ever conditioning
3. Blow drying with a comb attachment
4. Combing my hair while dry
5. Not using a wide tooth comb
6. Occasional pressing


Now that I think of it, there were a few curl sightings before I put the blow dryer on HIGH and tore though it. I‘ve seen a few curl clumps but I thought that they were the result of over straightening. When I had a perm, the front of my hair was curly but I thought it was the result of the perm. Those curls couldn’t have possibly been given to me by nature. All Black people had nappy hair unless they were biracial or there was some fluke of nature. That was what I believed and I know I wasn’t alone. I still describe my hair as nappy and that’s not a bad thing to me. I had been on naturallycurly.com for a short while, lurking and I thought the girl were insane “looking for their curl pattern.” They were dropping the knowledge about how to keep your hair healthy and their twists and twist outs looked like mine. I began to wonder. “Are there any curls up there?” “Maybe I will wash my hair in the shower, but I’m not giving up my shampoo.” Which became “ I will try to co wash, but I am not buying no hair products online.” That soon became “Alright getting hair shipments is like Christmas, but there is no way I can wash my hair and go!” Wrong and wrong again. If I can go my whole life with out truly knowing what my hair looks like, there are lots more experiments and hair concoctions to blend. I now have one more style to add to my arsenal; a wash n go fro.