Emma Dabiri
PRESENTER, SOCIAL HISTORIAN, WRITER AND AUTHOR OF
DON’T TOUCH MY HAIR
I never thought about my hair until I moved to Ireland. Racism and hatred towards my hair were the defining features of my experience with my hair. People were not just interested in it because it was different, there was a fascination, underscored with disgust. When I moved to London, I started relaxing my hair all the time. For a long time, I felt uncomfortable relaxing my hair. I knew it was because I was ashamed of my own hair texture and didn’t like the way my own hair looked. It was really a process of conforming to a beauty standard that didn’t really acknowledge my features. I felt uncomfortable with it, but I still felt too indoctrinated by those norms to stop. With black people’s hair, there is a range of different textures that exist. There’s quite a hierarchy of textures; the looser, softer curls are more desirable and the hair that favours more of African heritage is the hair that is more stigmatised. I’m mixed, so the expectation is that I have loose curly hair, but I don’t. As I started learning the process of all the things I could do with my hair, that really shifted my relationship with it, and that’s why my hair now changes from one week to the next. It really depends on my mood, what I’m wearing and what kind of vibe I want to go for. I love the versatility and change. The biggest messages you could take from my book are about more than hair, but I use hair to make the point. The way black hair is treated is almost an allegory for the way black people are treated and perceived. A lot of the language used to describe black hair – unmanageable, coarse, unruly, defiant – is language that used to be used to describe black people, but you can’t say that anymore, so it’s just shifted to head height. It’s about challenging stigma that exists around black hair that actually suppresses its power, capabilities and its beauty.
“I’m challenging stigma that exists around black hair that suppresses
its power.”