How We Learn to Hate Blackness and Why We Have to Change
by Sasha Estrella-Jones
August 2020
I do not remember the precise date when I first believed I was ugly. I did not go to bed feeling beautiful and then one day wake up, look in the mirror and think 'wow, I’m hideous'. That is not how it works, it was a gradual transition.
Once I saw myself as ugly, however, it took me many years to heal my inner-child, an enormous amount of self-love, and chopping off all my hair to truly believe otherwise. Everyone feels self-conscious from time to time. Most of us have that one thing we wish we could change. But where do those beliefs, the ones that say certain people or things about them are attractive and worthy of mirroring, while others are unsightly and in need of “fixing”, stem from? How do we learn to hate the way we look?
The first time I can remember thinking about the way I looked, I was around five years old. I was the lightest kid in my class, about a shade above Casper the Friendly Ghost. Growing up in a mixed-race family, with quite literally every shade from the blackest of blacks to the palest of white present, no one knew what color I was going to ultimately be.
After days of my prayers unanswered, with my skin tone unchanged, I stopped asking God to make me darker and accepted, though not happily, that I was not going to have a beautiful brown glow like my Dad. Aside from that, there was nothing that innately bothered me about the way I looked. Yet, there was one feature of mine that was the subject of polarizing conversation – my curly hair.
My Mom preferred my hair to be tied back in a tight bun, brushed out or straightened. She argued that I looked “clean”, “neat” and “put together” when my hair was “presentable”, in other words, not curly. My Dad felt otherwise. He loved my curly hair and always gave his best effort to style it naturally, although sometimes heavy-handedly, to which I would let out little yelps to alert him of my pain. My Mom would argue that my hair looked “messy” and “wild” when my curls were out, roaming free and untamed in all their ringlet glory.
When I was very young, I did not pay much mind to talk over my hair. It just was what it was. The older I got, however, I started to notice a trend. For any important event – picture days, family holidays, passport photos, vacations, school performances – my hair was either straightened, tied back, professionally curled or braided. Subconsciously, I was starting to internalize that curly hair was no good for anything where a camera would be present. If a picture might be taken, it meant I should have straight hair, at any cost.
When my hair was straight, it felt like my duty to protect it, because my curly hair could creep back in at any moment, first at my roots or even worse-my edges, and ruin the entire show. All of my actions were calculated, when my hair was straightened. I had to keep my eyes on the prize – straight hair with no frizz – straight hair, so straight, it looked natural.
That meant not getting sweaty, avoiding humidity and water at all cost. Sleeping in one position throughout the night, so I could wake up with straight hair. Not complaining at the hair salon, when the steam from the flat iron felt like it was burning my scalp; or when I was sick and tired of sitting in that damn chair! Then that one time, when instead of straightening my hair, the hairstylist caught my left ear in a 450-degree hot iron – a worthy sacrifice for a worthy cause.
What I had to remember was that my curly hair was the enemy and needed to be annihilated so that the world would only ever see beautiful, long, pin-straight hair. The erasure of my curls meant I could fit into the world around me, even if what they saw and what I yearned for was an illusion. But I was wililng to become an illusion, if only to be seen and accepted. Oh, how I wished straight hair was my reality every single day, not just for photos or fancy celebrations.
Then, it happened!
In middle school, I got my very own hot iron. It was a 'Remington Wet 2 Straight' flat iron where you could turn your wet curly hair into dry straight hair. I remember the satisfaction I would get as I put my freshly showered soaking wet curls straight onto the 400 degree heated metal plates. I could hear my hair sizzle like bacon, quite literally frying my hair strand by strand to achieve the desired results.
Why, as a twelve-year-old, was I given a piece of equipment that went up to 400 degrees is a conversation in and of itself; but, hey, a few blisters and burns from heat and steam were not going to stop me in my quest of pin-straight hair. By the time I got to high school, I was obsessed with having straight hair and had pretty much given up on trying to style my natural hair altogether.
What nobody had prepared me for was going to a high school that was 70% Asian, where most girls had naturally straight hair and looked nothing like me. That is when my self-esteem took a drastic blow, and I developed severe body dysmorphic disorder, along with my hatred for my curly hair.
But, I refused to be perceived as any less confident, even though I was secretly fearful that if anyone could see the cracks in my self-confidence, they would rip me to shreds; and I would be exposed as the ugly beast that I thought I was. What that meant is that I suffered quietly, showing no outward displays of depression.
I made friends quickly, was an A student, heavily involved in extracurriculars, outspoken and outgoing. I did everything I could to maintain the image of excellence, because it was the only thing keeping me going. But things only got worse. Practically every morning I had to factor in a cry session before school. I would leave my house to head to the train and then, turn around, head home and pretend like I forgot something so I could go back in my room and cry about how ugly I felt. It was starting to cripple me and I knew it was not normal. What saved me was my high school guidance counselor, Miss Ming.
Miss Ming was a beautiful, black woman with natural hair. One day, I went to her office, never having met her, but knowing I could not go on feeling like this. I knocked on her door and burst into tears about how ugly I felt. I did not want to be seen, but I desperately needed someone to see that I needed help. The girl who looked like she had it all together, in fact, did not; and hated her hair so much it was the source of real mental and emotional pain. It was not until I got much older that I could make sense of why I hated my natural hair as much as I did in my youth.
I did not have anyone to guide me about what I needed to do to take care of my naturally curly hair. Being of mixed-race, my Mom and I do not have hair that is alike at all. I was a kid before the days of Instagram, YouTube, or curly hair blogs, so my Mom did what she was taught – make me look “clean” by putting my hair in a bun by straightening my hair or brushing out my curls.
As I have gotten older and had to work through the resentment I felt towards my mother, I realized my Mom was a product of her environment and doing what she thought was best. Within the Latinx community, there has always been the discussion of “good” and “bad” hair, which consciously or not, stems from widespread anti-blackness that plagues our community.
Anything physical that is closer to blackness – dark skin, curly hair, hair with coils, wide noses, etcetera – is discussed as things that need “fixing”. My hair was no different. It needed to be tamed, to be controlled, to be altered to conform to Eurocentric beauty standards. For centuries, society has been brainwashed to believe pin-straight hair is beautiful, attractive, acceptable, professional, more desirable in every way, over curly hair and hair with coils, because of deep-seated anti-blackness that exists whether we are conscious about it or not.
Children are not born with self-esteem issues. You do not come out of the womb with a preconceived notion of what is ugly and what is beautiful. Yet, even before your birth, people discuss how you’ll look. It is not uncommon to hear people praying for a beautiful baby with “good hair”. There are even apps designed to show two people how their offspring might look. Infants are born into societies obsessed with beauty, societies that have rigid standards of who and what is and is not attractive. Beauty standards that are Eurocentric quite literally force people of color to alter what is natural about themselves, so they can be 'beautiful'. We tell children they can be anything they want to be, but does everyone get to be beautiful?
In my room, I keep out a picture of myself as a kid. She is quite cute, if I do say so myself, hands on her hips, back straight, smiling in what I know was a “say cheese” moment, in her green, white, and black striped sweatshirt. This pint-size human is confident, unbothered, and has a big personality with a lot of attitude. I was around 3 years old in that photo. What a small human being I was, but I knew who I was.
As we get older and outside voices creep in, telling us who we should and shouldn’t be, how we’re supposed to look, whom we’re allowed to love, what careers we’re supposed to have, it is easy to forget the inner child that lives in all of us. No matter how old I get, baby Sasha, the one full of self-confidence and unconditional self-love, who loved her curly hair before society told her not to, will always live inside me and I choose to love and honor her daily.