Dear White People, you don’t have to "love" my hair
I wonder if they'll ever actually stop?
A bit about me; I’m a journalist, a server at a restaurant to pay the bills, a recent college graduate (who knows how long I can keep saying that for), and very funny whenever I get the chance to crack a joke. I’m half-black and half-Hispanic and in detrimental need of more melanin. I’m what many consider a “Lightskin”. But at times, lightskin doesn’t even begin to classify me, some of us who deal with the same melanin decrease jokingly call it being “brightskinned”.
With being Black comes the strenuous work of having hair. Maintaining the physical curl structure atop your head but also maintaining the social structure surrounding your being. It’s fun and great having beautiful voluminous hair when someone in your ear isn’t being nasty or asking a thousand questions about it.
There are true moments of pride once in a while when I look at how far I’ve come hair-wise. Then there are moments when I get called Sideshow Bob and think about cutting it all off.
If you’re black, you might understand where this story is heading. And if you aren’t, think of this as a much-needed tutorial, sort of like in 2020 when white guilt circulated the country and people ran to Barnes and Noble to pick up books on how to be an ally to Black people.
Dear white people, you don’t have to “love” my hair.
And my god, I get that word all the time. “Love”. I love spaghetti, I love early 2000s Madonna, I love being a pain in the ass, but do YOU love my hair?
Working in a restaurant with a primarily white demographic of guests, I get this at least once a day. They’ll stop me, and it’s usually preceded with “I saw you from across the room…” and I end it with the fakest, most uncomfortable smile I’ve ever placed on my face and a “Thank you” so I can run away and try to avoid these people till they leave.
This is of course if they let me leave after my first two or three thank you’s, sometimes I’m held hostage.
“What is your hair routine?” and “How does it stay up like that?” were some I got back in December. In my head, all I could think was “Is this their first time seeing someone black?” I responded with a “this is how it always is” and a shrug. But my favorite question after I’ve been visibly trying to run away for several minutes is “Is it real?”
I get a cold rush throughout my body each time I hear it. With the amount of comments and tree branches I have to dodge each day, why wouldn’t it be real? In these cases, I sort of pray that that question doesn’t happen again, but I know it will.
The “love” that I get from white people at times doesn’t look like love or feel like it. Infatuation would be a nice word for it, fetishization would be a bit more precise.
What do you “love” about my hair that you don’t love on yours?
I love my hair, but I don’t mind straight hair either. I mean, I definitely love a bob. Look at Anna Wintour, or Hayley Williams in 2013, or even Andre 3000 in 2003. But when it comes to straight hair, I don’t tend to comment on it, and if I do usually the word I use is “great”. If that’s the state of their natural hair, why would I comment on it?
I don’t often see white people commenting on white or straight hair. Perhaps Sabrina Carpenter is the best representation recently surrounding “hair discourse”, but straight hair oftentimes only gets complimented based on haircuts and hairstyle changes. Seeing an Afro as a hairstyle and not a natural state of someone’s hair is step one of reforming/rethinking what it means to be Black and have black hair.
When people come up to me attempting to compliment my hair that they absolutely “love”, they will say the words “interesting”, “wild”, or sometimes even “savage.” Not only is it awkwardly-offensive to receive these comments, but it makes you think of what time period we’re living in.
Afro hair works via curl pattern. This means, those of us with heftier kinky hair, have afros that sometimes shape in upward directions; while those who have looser curls tend to have longer flowing hair that best assimilates with straight hair.
We cannot necessarily control genetics, but we can control the way the hair of a black person is discussed.
I like to think of hair as a snowflake; no two are exactly alike. But it doesn’t prescribe you to point out everything that’s different around you.
If you think this is overly aggressive, defensive, or critical, you definitely might be right. Perhaps from a lens of good and whole-heartedness, maybe these white folk are really thinking that pointing out my hair is a compliment that will make me feel good or proud.
But my words come from a place where a person has been overwhelmed for the last decade of their life. continually figuring out new hair products, maintenance, stares on the street, and white people commenting on the obvious.
You don’t have to love my hair, but you can definitely appreciate it.