Anything but Lovely Locks

by Sylvia
(Ohio)

I'm only a teenager. My hair is dark brown, with unnatural gold highlights. It's is curly/wavy. Depends. Sometimes the curls are long and loose. Other times not so much.

When I was born I had a full head of black curly hair. By the time I was five my hair was brown and straight. It stayed straight until sixth grade. But that didn't matter - in grade 6 every girl wore her hair in its natural form. Though most girls had straight hair. I wasn't special.

But by grade 7 my hair was a huge deal! And not in a good way! All the girls, except me, had stick straight hair with no frizz. My hair was wavy/curly and when the Ohio weather was humid - very frizzy. All the girls would always tell me how bad they felt for me. Having different hair. I liked standing out, but I did want to change my hair a little.

My hair has always been very long, but I didn't quite cut it. I highlighted it, then cut it. I tried gold highlights that were supposed to make my hair look nicer. Sadly the result was a huge glob of gold color on one side of my hair and a light gold on the other. (It's mostly faded now). The glob annoyed me - it was right where these two ringlets were. I hated those little rings. The were tight curls that always fell in my face. So one night I chopped them off. I cut them up to my forehead. It looked very bad! There was this little poof of hair in the center.

It grew out a little. While the girls ranted on about how bad my hair was the elderly ladies complimented it. At mass they would touch it (which I hated!) and say how lovely it was.

I disagreed. This led to my mom trying to straighten in. After two hours my hair did nothing. It would be straight for a few seconds before BOING the curl was back.

After a couple years of fighting my hair I gave up. I decided that long wavy/curly hair would somehow work for me.

I told myself the other girls were damaging their hair by straightening it every single day. I recall my literature teacher saying, "Natural beauty is not as good as inner beauty, but you're being honest when you are not covering yourself with make-up and hair products." That little quote gave me pride.

Even after a few years people tell me how bad curly hair is. I don't care. I found out that curly hair looks cute half-up half-down and in a pony tail. Straight hair does too, and even though my hair takes more work ... I'm proud to stand out.