I’ve always wanted to be Julia Roberts. Specifically, 1997 Julia Roberts in My Best Friend’s Wedding: a blazer-wearing journalist with, notably, a mane of sensational, very natural-looking curls. As I sat and rewatched the film for the millionth time, marvelling at her hair, I clocked that mine – which is not dissimilar in texture or curl pattern – was styled poker straight. Again. In fact, it’s been like this for most of the past month or so. It’s as if the two years I spent refusing to straighten my hair, between 2021 and 2023, (and the following year of straightening it a lot less) never even happened.
I’m sure this isn’t the first time you’ll have encountered someone who’s had a complex relationship with their curly hair. It’s practically a modern folk tale – a reaffirming of skewed beauty standards, passed down through generations: girl is born with textured hair; loved it as a child; then grew up in an environment that told her that straight hair was the only attractive option.
I have my very own Curly Girl Origin Story. My 3b curls – a mix of my mum’s straight hair and my dad’s Afro – were a source of childhood pride. I grew up in a very northern, white area, and was one of the few people with curly hair I knew, which made me feel special. High school, of course, stamped that out of me – we all know that the ’00s were not the time to have anything but straight hair, or to be different from what’s ‘popular’ in any way, be it my appearance, my weight, my clothes or social status. So, like many others, I channelled all of my teenage insecurities into my hair – the easiest thing for me to change – and became best friends with my ghds.
This continued on well into my twenties, reaching a peak when I moved to London and got my first ‘real’ job. My life as a magazine girl in the big city became synonymous with straight hair – I was faced with page after page of models with poker-straight lengths, and I suddenly had access to a beauty cupboard full of products promising to reduce frizz. In this world, my natural hair didn’t get a look-in – I didn’t think it made me seem professional, or adult, or put-together. It’s something you internalise, when hair discrimination exists in everything from educational settings to the workplace, where one in five Black women feel the need to wear their hair straight. The longstanding idea that Black hair is ‘unprofessional’ is rooted in these very environments, from my high school’s ban on ‘extreme’ braids (a widely known protective style for Afro textures) to the everyday comments and unsolicited touching from colleagues that mark your hair – and therefore you – out as different.
This holy grail product left me defined, moisturised and frizz-free — finally.
Not only are we contending with pressures from influential figures and outlets, but of those around us. Innocent comments from friends that “your hair looks great” after you’ve had a blowdry have an effect. I’ve been told that wearing my hair straight makes my face look thinner – which, no matter how hard I’ve worked to appreciate my body as it is, does trigger something in my brain, whether I like it or not. And it’s hard not to listen when the guy you’ve been seeing turns to you, twirling one of your ringlets between his fingers, only to say: “Have you ever thought about relaxing your hair?” It’s no wonder I straightened my hair for so long.
Though, there was one exception to my hairstyling rule. I didn’t do it when I went back home to see my family. There was such a dichotomy between my life in London and who I was during my trips up north: the me I thought I had to present to the world, and the person I was at my most comfortable. When I headed out of the city, I no longer felt the same pressure to style my hair. Washing it in that deliciously soft northern water allowed my (damaged, but still very much present) curls to spring back to life – much to the joy of my family. And, if I’m honest, me.
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Years of flitting back and forth between these spaces, and personas, gradually brought me back to my curly hair again (along with years of being locked down, in which the ‘need’ to do anything with my hair vanished). I was reminded of the freedom that comes with leaving your hair to its own devices; how it feels to not get up an hour earlier to start a long-winded styling process. It’s a quiet, almost subconscious, act of self-acceptance.
This led to two full years without me using anything but the occasional blast of a diffuser on my hair. Two full years of it being curly. My hair became shinier, bouncier, healthier as a result. My mindset changed, too.
For the first time, I wore curly hair on nights out; I dated guys for months who never even knew I owned straighteners; I sat in meetings at work, advocated for myself and got a promotion, all with my natural hair tumbling across my shoulders. Those two years helped to rewire my brain: how I saw myself; what I deemed appropriate, acceptable, attractive.
You might not get the job, but I promise that will be the best outcome in the long run…
So why now, after all this, is my hair straight again? Why has it been like this for weeks? Why have I, slowly but surely, begun to revert back to my old ways – straightening it when I need a confidence boost?
Something has shifted. Not just in me, but in wider society: our role models, our ideals, in the media we consume. It feels as though all of the ‘positivity’ movements of recent years are beginning to dwindle. Take the incredible wave of body positivity that saw people of all shapes welcomed into the fashion space. That somehow now feels like an age ago. Thanks to Ozempic, online fitness influencers, a resurgence of ’90s ‘heroin chic’ on style moodboards and the looming toxic January diet culture, thin is very much back in.
And while the Black Lives Matter movement swept across the world in 2020 – bringing education, awareness and a seeming celebration of the cultures, traditions and identities of People of Colour – I can’t help but feel as though the focus on representation, particularly by the media, is no longer a true priority. The initial outpouring of content was, hopefully, well-meant – but at the same time it was evidently performative.
In a landscape that’s supposed to have come a long way in terms of inclusion, the dedication to destabilising Eurocentric beauty standards has wavered. Conversations surrounding diversity continue to be difficult to navigate, inclusion often feels like a second thought and, particularly when it comes to beauty, many major brands still have a long way to go to truly represent and cater to darker skin tones and textured hair. So it’s no wonder that many of us feel pressured to continue to follow convention and straighten every wave, curl and coil.
Then there’s the influence of celebrity culture. My forever icon Julia now rarely wears her hair in its natural curls. Zendaya, who once broke boundaries with her faux locs at the Oscars, wore her hair straight on most of her red carpet appearances last year – a move matched by Rihanna, who similarly has sported long, sleek styles at public events throughout 2024 (despite a brief hiatus when launching her Fenty Hair line, showing off her natural cropped curls for the first time ever). For all 149 shows of her record-breaking Eras Tour, Taylor Swift stepped out with a fresh blowdry, despite the fact that by the end of each performance, her hair wound its way back into curls without fail. And even Beyoncé returned to straight, bleached, hyper-long locks to coincide with her latest Cowboy Carter album release.
What message is this sending? That natural isn’t cutting it. When it comes to hair, the kind of curls that spring from our roots are a no. But artfully styled, uniform waves, courtesy of a hot tong or heatless rollers? Perfect. Sigh.
On the same day I’d gone over my hair for the umpteenth time with my trusty wide ghds to… sit in my house and work from home, I came across an Instagram post from Don't Touch My Hair author Emma Dabiri, which read: “Straight hair and skinniness have aggressively reinstated themselves as the beauty standard. Do not underestimate how fucking invasive and pervasive this shit is."
She’s so right. In a matter of months, trends, conventions and unwavering celebrity influence has convinced me of something that I know fundamentally is not true: that my curly hair is not good enough. Once again, I fell into the trap and believed it, and began straightening my hair all over again. Now I’ve acknowledged it, I can work on doing it less – starting now.
This doesn’t mean that I won’t be using hair tools ever again. After all, one of the greatest things about the world of beauty is that it gives us the autonomy to sculpt and shape and preen ourselves so that we feel good, however that might manifest for each of us. And sometimes, it’s nice to have a change – whether that’s emulating a bouncy blowdry, slicking my hair up into a bun, braiding it back into cornrows or piling my curls on my head and letting ringlets frame my face. It’s a privilege that my curly hair allows me the versatility to create all of these styles with relative ease.
That’s the thing. It’s not that I’ve never liked curly hair, I just didn’t like it on myself – because, for so long, I didn’t particularly like myself, and the world told me that my hair might be the reason why. Learning to no longer use my hair as armour, or to fit in, isn’t easy, but I am realising that my self-worth isn’t linked to it – and that my value isn’t defined by other people’s opinions. It takes work to become comfortable in your own skin, and to accept that a part of you that is completely natural can also be something that’s good. This is still taking me time. But one thing I am sure of, is that no matter how I’m feeling about myself, my face, my body or even how my hair looks overall, my natural curls are beautiful. I’ve just spent too long allowing society to convince me otherwise.
