CURL POWER
Ateh Jewel on learning to love her natural hair
‘Mama! I’ve sectioned and detangled my hair all by myself!’ Adanna, seven, ran into the kitchen with juicy, welldefined curls. With that simple act of self-care, she broke a cycle of self-loathing that stretched generations. Because here’s the thing about hair – it’s never what it seems.
Growing up with thick coils inherited from my Nigerian father, I had what my mother (a finer-haired Trinidadian) called ‘bush hair’ – not the ‘good’ hair that grows down instead of out and blows in the wind, but the hair of slaves, servants and the funky, funny sidekick – never the star. Sick of combing the knots out while I wriggled and screamed, she introduced me to chemical straightening when I was eight years old. It was a painful, expensive chore I repeated throughout my adult life, but one I believed would help me get work, be taken seriously and squash the shame I associated with my natural hair.
Thirty years later, I became the mother of mixed-heritage twin girls with hair nothing like mine. Barely able to look after my own, I was clueless when it came to theirs, damaging it with dry brushing and overloading it with oil. It was time to learn some new beauty rules and confront the self-hating voice I was determined not to pass on.
Textured hair is challenging: it’s prone to tangling, breaking or becoming matted. But the techniques once passed down by mothers and aunties were lost in the
West as straightening increased in popularity. Helped instead by the online ‘team natural’ community, I bought silk pillowcases (less dehydrating than cotton), misted my girls’ hair with water, locked the moisture in with cream and eradicated tangles by plaiting it before bedtime.
As my confidence grew, I wondered what was so wrong with my own hair and started to go chemical-free. I wore braids to make the transition to natural hair, then went for ‘the big chop’. It was liberating but scary – natural texture isn’t yet associated with power, glamour or education, and I knew the world would view me as more ethnic, more black, more ‘other’. But things are changing. When an actor such as Lupita Nyong’o or Viola Davis wears natural hair, society reframes the way it sees me.
Practically, it’s not the hard work I feared – now I just wash and go. Sometimes I look at Beyoncé and miss my weave, but then I remember my itchy scalp and feel grateful for my coils, not least for how they’re contributing to a world where my girls can feel powerful and sophisticated, however they choose to wear their hair.