After leaving salons consistently feeling as if our curly texture was the problem, many curly girls turn to straighteners, erasing a part of our identity. Now, there’s a new movement restoring pride in our hair — and in who we are.
The first time I left a hair salon feeling good was last week — I’m 24. My dad is Black Caribbean, and my mom is white; growing up, she had straight blonde hair.
My white friends brushed through silky locks at their lockers between classes, and even Misty Copeland, my mixed-race dance icon, wore straightened hair.
Hairstylists in my small Canadian town were inexperienced with curly hair. A low point for me was returning to grade school after a lunchtime appointment with my head of frizz cut in a humiliating triangle.
Pair this with comments saying, “You look hotter with straight hair” and “You’re not actually Black so you can’t be offended,” I experienced deep tension about my identity. If I didn’t wear my hair curly, people would deny my heritage. Yet if I wore it curly, I wasn’t pretty?
I “fixed” the problem with a straightening iron, which sizzled as I erased the notable feature that connected me to my Caribbean heritage.
My grandmother, a Bajan civil rights activist in Canada, had lighter skin, but when questioned, she was steadfast about her racial identity. Straightening the curls that came from her felt, in a way, like a betrayal.
My curl journey isn’t unique to the lack of diversity in my town. A study by Vanessa Geissler on American multiracial women showed that most face “lifelong struggles with styling their curly hair” and resort to intense straightening. Hairstylists’ lack of competency with curls is a repeated theme in curly girls’ conversations.
Sunny, 29, is a mixed-race curly-haired woman from New York. “The hairdresser assured me she could do a blow-out with my curl pattern […] She tangled my hair so badly that we had to walk out halfway through,” she told us, recounting what had solidified her fear of salons.
Sunny had keratin treatment throughout high school, a damaging chemical straightener. “It wasn’t the only way I tried to blend in with my white community, but it’s the most tangible way,” she says.
“Clients come in visibly shaking with fear because they’ve had such horrific haircuts.”
Joleigh Wynter
Joleigh Wynter, a curly hair specialist who founded Curl Talk salon in London, has her own traumatic experiences in the UK. “I even had trouble calling mine a salon, because I hated my experiences there so much.”
Being mixed race in London, Joleigh says, “There was no in-between for me. It was either an Afro-Caribbean or traditional European salon; I had horrific experiences at both.” She founded a salon to create a space for all identities.
Joleigh says that the UK hairdressing curriculums teach five or six textbook haircuts, which presume hair is straight. Fed up, she travelled to the United States to learn from Lorraine Massey, founder of “The Curly Girl Method.”
In 1999, Lorraine pioneered dry-cutting curl-by-curl, which accounts for shrinkage and curl patterns. The traditional method of wetting and pulling hair straight to cut neglects the reality of curls shrinking dramatically when dry.
Today, Joleigh has trained a team of curl experts who work to rebuild trust in salons. She says, “Clients come in visibly shaking with fear because they’ve had such horrific haircuts.”
The salon sees girls as young as three hating their curls. Joleigh feels that hate for curls is about not knowing how to properly care for them, something solved through educating kids and parents: “If your hair looks good, you feel good, and curly-haired people deserve that too.”
Joleigh is now one of several hair salons educating and empowering girls to change the narrative about curls.
When Curl Talk first opened, Joleigh says, “Appointments would book up in minutes of their release”, and people travelled from Germany and even Australia. Now, the website Curly Sister helps women find which, among many, curly hair salons in their city have the best-trained stylists. Joleigh is one of 26 listed in London.
The Natural Hair Movement, a societal shift towards normalizing and celebrating textured hair, comes with more curl representation in entertainment — there are even curly hair influencers — and a rise in curl-trained hairstylists.
The movement has manifested throughout Joleigh’s career; she has loved seeing people finally wearing their natural curls for their weddings or her corporate clients feeling their curls are viewed as professional enough.
There are still challenges within the natural hair movement. One is the presence of textures, where looser curl patterns are favoured over others in the media. Another is the high cost of curly cuts, a direct result of the high cost of curl training that stylists must go out of their way to find.
For mixed-race women, hair is often more than just aesthetics; it’s a marker of identity. Feeling confident wearing my curls feels like an act of pride and defiance, claiming my “in-betweenness” as a valid place to exist.
Now, I only wear my hair curly — through online research, I curated a curl care routine. There are still days I wish I didn’t have to worry about the rain or spend so much on conditioner.
“It’s still a journey,” says Sunny about embracing her curls. A journey made easier with a rise in representation, information online, and access to adequately trained stylists.
Last week, I left the Curl Talk salon in Shoreditch feeling that my hair was not a problem but something to celebrate.
More than that, I could almost feel my grandmother smile down on me for embracing the curls she passed on.
Featured image courtesy of Reegan Downer.