The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl by Issa Rae Page B

wearing my hair in its natural state. Despite whatever was trending, I couldn’t understand why people were so concerned with how my hair looked when it grew out of my scalp. Why was it so offensive?
    Of course, my sixth-grade brain didn’t really know to ask those questions or fully understand the history and social implications of my natural hair, so I just handled it the best way I could—by hiding it. Over the course of my middle and high school years, I hid myhair through braids, scarves, thin, flat-iron presses, and hoods—anything just to avoid showing my real hair in public. My hair, once a source of confidence, became my burden of shame.
    My mother was disgusted by my insecurity.
    “Why do you keep covering your head?!” she would yell, frustrated.
    “Because you married an African, MOM! AN AFRICAN!” I would cry-yell, Full House style, in my head (because I knew better).
    She just didn’t get it. For one thing, my mother was “light-skinned,” and though she wore her hair naturally at times, her softer-looking texture differed from mine. Furthermore, she and my aunt, whose hair was that “good, silky Indian” hair, grew up during the sixties and seventies, when natural hair was a statement of pride and militant activism. The only source of judgment she faced was from my Southern grandparents, who couldn’t fathom why their daughters wouldn’t straighten their wild Afros. They didn’t have to face throngs of straight-haired middle school girls, or endure the public shunning of cute high school guys. I mean, sure, they were ostracized and brutalized for their skin color in general, but tomato/tomahto. My mother didn’t know my struggle.
    I begged her to let me relax my hair like the other girls at my school. In fact, it was at the suggestion of some of my black girlfriend allies that I got a perm. My mother warned me repeatedly that my hair was too soft to handle the chemicals in a relaxer, but I insisted. Perhaps my pleading eyes moved her to let me do it. A few weeks after rocking my fresh relaxer, I noticed that my hair started to break off at rapid speed. I tried to defend my jagged, rough edges to my friends at school.
    “Dang, your hair is so short,” one girl snapped.
    “That’s ’cause I had cut it . . .” I lied, as I twirled a strand that came off on my finger.
    After the deed was done and my hair fell out, I’m pretty convinced that my mother just wanted to say, “I told your bald-headed ass so.”
    I soon realized that I was worse off than when I started. The sad fact that I was willing to damage my own God-given hair before wearing it out in public was not lost on me. By college, I knew that I had deep-rooted hair issues and sought to come to terms with it by experimenting with natural hairstyles. But when I went home to show off my twisted locks, my little brother was quick to tell me that, aesthetically, my hair “didn’t look right.”
    After college, I moved to New York and started experimenting with weaves. It was like cheating. I could achieve the coveted top tier of the “hairarchy” while keeping my natural hair hidden underneath. Still, the difference in reception to “my” new hair was astonishing. Guys who had never and would never talk to me before were suddenly attentive and girls wanted to befriend me. Having a weave even inspired me to start dressing differently and carrying myself more confidently. Still, the disrespect to my former kinks was blatant.
    When I moved back to Los Angeles and reunited with my friends, they too were impressed with my new New York look. “Girl, you look fly!” Even my younger brother who had dismissed my college twists paid me a compliment, the first ever , directed at my physical self. “Wow, your hair looks nice,” he said, as he opened the door to let me in.
    A mere change of styles was changing my life socially and opening all kinds of doors that had previously been shut. I became hip to the life in which I had been so