Summer is always a hard time for me when it comes to my appearance. The older I got with each passing summer only came with an increasing disdain for the summer months. I had—have always had, a hard time navigating my body and being comfortable with the space I take up. I hated trying to find clothes to wear during the summer because while I wanted to wear “less” or tighter clothing because of the heat, I also felt uncomfortable in those clothes because I felt fat. I remember one summer when I was thirteen I had worn a sweater, a t-shirt, and jeans to the park that day, and it was hot as hell. When my mom saw me when she got back from work she asked why the hell I was wearing a sweater, and I thought that was the craziest thing to ask. Like what’s the big deal? I just wanted to wear it. Babes, it was 80 degrees, what’s going on? Lol.
I have never really felt pretty during the summers. I sweat, so much, on my face even if I just step outside and because of that I feel really gross and unattractive. Now, I think I have hyperhidrosis (nobody believes me 😩), but it’s like nooooo other girls around me visibly sweat. Like, we’ll all say that we’re hot, but it’s like I’m the only one visibly sweating and it makes me wanna unalive myself 😭. For me, it’s hard to feel very feminine during the summertime because of sweating, but also because I don’t feel comfortable dressing the way I want to dress. Whether that be a mixture of body insecurities, or just men being really gross and staring at me. I HATE being stared at, especially by men. Have you ever been eye fucked? LIKE NOT EVEN FLATTERING MYSELF, this has happened! I don’t even want to describe it, but wow. If that's the kind of desire we dishing out, I don't want it LMAO.
The summertime has always been a test of my confidence. I do feel like this summer has been better tho, but that’s because I’m no longer a young impressionable teenager who cares what everyone thinks (just older and less impressionable, but impressionable nonetheless). Don’t get me wrong, I still do believe that once I step out this apartment building all eyes are on me, but as you get older you realize that no one else is living your life, you are the one that’s stuck with yourself so you might as well do what you want. That leads to my focus for this piece. I don’t think I care anymore about trying to mold myself into a person that is desirable for all (or any). I have struggled in the past with being a people pleaser, and I feel like that flowed over to how I physically represent myself, or at least remains a small voice in the back of my head. Whenever I’d look for something to wear I always do a double take and think about how I’ll be perceived. When I’m not worried about how my body physically looks, I’m worried about how the clothes I wear will make others think about me.
I am so hyper-aware of the way my outward appearance looks. I know that as a darkskin girl, if I wear bright neon green hair (I really want green hair), people are gonna think I’m ghetto (ain’t nothing wrong with being ghetto), but then with that perception they will equate that to how they should treat me—which is with more aggression, or rudeness, or hostility. The same is done if I wear my natural hair and it’s not slicked down or in a ponytail. I don’t wear my hair out enough to experience mistreatment for it, but we’re not dumb. We know that exists and that’s probably part of the reason I don’t wear my hair out that much. There is this inherent anti-blackness and mistreatment when Black women, especially darkskin Black women with 4c hair, wear their natural hair out.
We saw that play out with Tiktok user Lipglossssss when she posted a video about accepting her natural hair for what it is without product or manipulation. In that same video, she sarcastically stated that she’d only pull white boys with her unmanipulated natural hair, and niggas on Twitter were ENRAGED. Pick me’s and Black men were up in arms about the small joke she made and preceded to engage in more anti-blackness against her. One man USED HER PHOTOS from TikTok and paid $30 dollars to make a Hinge profile to do an experiment to see if Black men would swipe right on her (or however it work on Hinge) ??!
That’s why it is so annoying to exist as a darkskin Black woman or femme because of the violence you receive for just existing. It’s rather terrifying.
On a much less intense side of the spectrum is where most Black women reside and that’s just being ignored when they have their natural hair out, or people (including other Black people, I pray y’all heal) who give shady remarks about their choice to wear their 4c hair. For the most part, I choose not to engage. I have no problem with my natural hair (well...), I have 4b so my perspective is different, but for the most part I keep it in braids. The natural hair discussion is…so much LMAO. There are so many different levels to it, whether it be how there is always a change in rules in how to maintain it, or the relaxer vs. natural hair discussion, or the should you wear braids on your birthday discussion, I have no desire to engage with any of that at the moment. What I really wanna talk about is what Lipglossss introduced, or re-introduced with her Tiktok video. She displayed a Black woman with 4c hair waking up in the morning, spraying some water on her hair, picking it out, and going about her day. That sounds extremely simple, but it is extremely hard. It’s what the natural hair movement started out as before it was infiltrated by the 3A girlies. Lipglossss stated that she is going to allow her hair to do what it wants to do, she didn’t stretch it out because her hair isn’t long and it isn’t meant to be long, and that’s okay. That made me think about how we equate length with value. Why? Who said that longer hair is better, healthier, more deserving of praise? Who said that having shorter hair makes you less valuable? Why? It’s so dumb when you stop for a second and think about it, yet it’s so accepted—and even heightened when it comes to Black women. A white girl could rock a pixie cut or bob and she’s called edgy, cool, sexy. A Black woman wears hair 4c fro and she’s called baldheaded I-
When I first saw Lipglosssss’ video I admired her for being able to do that, and also acknowledged that it could likely never be me. I could not stand the looks, the perceptions, the remarks…I couldn’t see myself putting myself in a position for people to devalue me, because that is the result when you are a Black woman with short natural hair, and even more so when you are dark-skinned.
I looked at the other videos on the sound, some had popped up on my for you page. I saw a bunch of other Black women with 4c hair doing what Lipglosssss had done, wearing their hair with no manipulation, no gel, no edge control, just flowing from the root. It made me really happy to see that Lipglosssss’ video had inspired so many people and that they had been motivated to post it online. It’s very hard feeling beautiful in your natural hair, especially when it’s not at your desired length. I’ve cried about it before, lol. I’ve had moments where I tried to feel pretty with my hair out and take some pictures, and I just couldn’t. That’s so sad.
I don’t wanna live with self-hatred, but I don’t even know if I’d call it self-hatred because I didn’t do it to myself. It’s the hatred that I know I’ll get from loving the hair that grows from my scalp that I just preemptively administer to myself.
I always liked the feeling of getting my hair slicked up into a bun. My mom would get out the Jam that smelled so goddamn good oh my goodness, and she'd have the same two toned gray and black brush that we always used to do my hair. I have never bought new hair tools (brush and comb) ever, I've used the same ones my mom used when she did my hair as a little girl. Anyways, the feeling of her brushing up all the hair, especially the front part of my hair, is probably the shit that they put in melatonin. She never did it particularly rough, but even then I wouldn't mind. I liked the look of a super slicked tight bun. It not only gave me a face lift, but also immediately makes your skin look clearer--that and I had a gallon of vaseline (or Eucerin for my girlies with eczema) all over my face.
Anywho, that's just what I was thinking about while I sat here playing in my hair. I have just taken my faux locs out. I believe I had them for approximately one week, definitely the shortest I've EVER had a hairstyle like that that had so many individual parts. I'm not even mad about it which is even weirder because it took me like a full day to wash my hair, put in the plaits, then crochet the hair; I didn't finish until 11pm. Yet, here I am a week later undoing all that work. Why? I know I may be thinking too much into it, but since the end of April I've plowed through four different hairstyles. Normally, I'm the type of person to keep a hairstyle in for at least two months, if I can't keep it in for at least a month then the hairstyle is a waste. I don't know how I got from there to here where I'm keeping hairstyles in for less than a week.
I don't even think it's out of genuine desire for a new hairstyle, but I think it's because I'm a little lost. Again, you may be like it's just hair, and it is, and because I'm doing my hair myself this hasn't cost me more than $25 dollars in all, BUT I fear I'm a little concerned.
You know, I really thought I was past that intense self-discovery portion of my life, like I had figured out strongly who I am and what I want to look like, but with these last few months, I've just felt really lost. We all had that time during quarantine to sit with ourselves and that's when a lot of people, like myself, discovered their personal style and "font" I like to say. I say font rather than aesthetic because sticking to one aesthetic is hard and very limiting. Fonts can kinda be like an umbrella kinda thing where there's the main name for the font, but it can come in different text sizes, variations, styles--light, thin, condensed, etc. It can be bold or italic, it can even be different colors. Anyways (weird ass tangent), I thought I had found the font I wanted to be, and I still feel like I have, but recently the different variations of the font hasn't really been working out for me. I've found myself getting really tired of my hairstyles pretty quickly because nothing feels right.
All the changes aren’t even fun anymore 😭. I've stood for 7+ hours in the bathroom three times this summer doing my hair like this is getting bit ridiculous. Don't get me wrong I really enjoy braiding my hair, I find it therapeutic, but my fucking feet HURT.
I'm gonna try to kick it with my natural hair for now. It's just so--ugh. Wearing the hair that comes from my scalp should not be so anxiety inducing, but it is. On one hand it's stressful because I have the run of the mill insecurities about it not looking good and not feeling feminine because it's short. On the other hand, when I'm not dealing with those insecurities I feel like wearing it out always has this underlying statement that's being made. I feel like people think me choosing to wear my hair out translates into a political statement--like I can't just exist. I don't know, I know it's not all in my head, but I do realize I shouldn't let that affect me too much. I overthink it so much. It's not that deep, it's literally just hair.
~ A few days later
I honestly didn’t know what I planned to do with my hair, but I knew that I just wanted those locs out so I’d figure all that out later. When I woke up on Sunday I just played around in my hair a bit. I had a nice curly pattern from the plaits I had in so I thought I’d wear it like that. I wanted it to be more puffy, so I picked it out a bit and sprayed some water on the front because the front part of my hair gives 4a when stretched and I wanted the curls to be tighter. I kept picking it and pulling it, but for the most part it was ready to go. I added nothing--no gel, no curling cream, only water. I had somewhere to go later that afternoon, but I still didn’t know if I was actually going, so at this point I was just doing my hair to stay in the house. I REALLY liked it, my hair. I always have my hair stretched out, being cheap with the water because that’s what causes the hair to get puffy, so I really didn’t know that my hair could fro like that. Then I was like, okay lets just put on this dress I’m gonna return, ya know? Just to see how an outfit might look if I were to go outside like this, which I’m not. I put the dress on, and even though I had disliked it a few days earlier (I got it to wear with my locs so I could look like those ethereal girlies), it surprisingly looked so much better now. My afro paired with the black dress was a LOOK! I put on some jewelry, my necklaces first, then my watch, then my rings, and I really really liked how I looked.
I think that’s why I took all those other hairstyles out so quickly. Part of me was interested in trying new hairstyles on myself, but maybe part of my subconscious or the universe was pushing me towards my natural hair, hell I intended to have my natural hair out this whole summer and that just didn’t end up happening lmao. As soon as I had taken out the last plait from my locs everything just felt so much better. It felt right.
It was getting closer to the time I was supposed to go out, but I still didn’t know if I was going. I decided that I’d take a picture for Instagram, and then figure out what I was actually gonna wear and do to my hair. I sat down in my usual spot to take a pic, but it just wasn’t giving. The pictures looked fine, but I wasn’t satisfied with just posting a picture to Instagram. In other words, I didn’t want to simply post a picture of my hair and get likes when I was really just gonna sit in the house and slick the shit back if I left, so I challenged myself to a dare. I would leave the house in my fro and dress! Hair out, titties OUT, stallion in full effect, ya know?! (Sorry). Because, why not? I tried convincing myself to just wait until I was back on campus because the whites don’t care, but also because it’d be less daunting to wear that dress and my natural hair—both things I never could’ve dawned in previous summers. However, you can die at any moment, and I told myself that I couldn’t keep pushing shit off into the future when it may be easier because I might not have that future, so I had to do it now.
Luckily, that day was a good day for my anxiety (a whole other story) and I wasn’t in a mindset of overthinking it. I was really gonna do it, and I did. I left my house for the third time ever with my hair in a shrunken fro. I had done it once in highschool; Nobody said anything, but I felt terrible just from looking at it in the bathroom mirror that day and I was so embarrassed that I wore my hoodie during last period and all the way home. I did it again last fall when I was back home from school and walked four blocks to the beauty supply store. That time was better, but I ended up sweating and feeling kind of ugly. And lastly, we’re back to last Sunday, when I wore it out to go to the park which was a 48 minute bus ride and 16 minute walk away from my house—meaning, I was gonna see a lot of people.
The day was fine, great even. I felt so confident, and I really do owe part of it to Lipglosssss. Seeing her video about her natural hair acceptance and her other videos (because she just creates bomb content) really gave me the push I needed. That day, I accepted that fact that maybe people wouldn’t find me attractive, that I wouldn’t be desirable, that they might even critique me for the way that I looked, but I didn’t care. I am so tired of giving people control of my life in all aspects, but most importantly my emotions and my appearance. I don’t care if people find my ugly, I don’t care if I don’t fit their standard of beauty. That kind of acceptance can be really depressing, because we all just want to be accepted, loved, and desired, but I’m not gonna risk my sanity and freedom of expression for the sake of being accepted by niggas I’m never gonna see again in my life, or who I just genuinely don’t give a fuck about. I don’t wanna live for other people, and I don’t want to be trapped in that box of what we deem socially acceptable, especially when it comes to desirability politics regarding Black women.
I don’t owe anyone desirability. It is so exhausting trying to navigate the world as a Black women to find out which costume gets you accepted, when in reality no matter what role you choose to play people are going to treat you like shit regardless. So why not be treated like shit in the appearance I enjoy the most 🤷🏾♀️? I find that the people who do what they wanna do attract love, success, happiness, and etc because real people fuck with and gravitate to authenticity. I’m not saying that the person I’ve portrayed myself to be is inaccurate, I’m just saying there is so much I haven’t tapped into and so much I had to convinced myself to show because it is so scary being authentically yourself. Even though there are a lot of positive reactions when I do live on this side of being me, there are negative ones that stand out and make it feel like the positive ones never existed. I’m still rewiring myself to stop letting negativity overpower the positive. Negative opinions are not more important than positive ones just because they dare disagree. All in all, I enjoyed the fuck out of walking around Brooklyn with my fro, black dress from h&m, Doc sandals, and motherfucking Telfeezy (purrr). Will I be doing this again? I don’t know. It’s not a new level that I’ve unlocked that I’ll always have access too, nah this door may close and LOCK again, but I‘m gonna keep trying to keep the door open. It’s hard, and that day I was really in a I don’t give a fuck attitude—that is not going to be everyday. All I know is that I’m grateful for the day I had, and I will forever be proud of myself for just accepting me, my hair, and my body for what it is.
FYI this is not to be on some only wear your natural hair shit, nooo! I love a good box braid, weave, lace front, silk press, relaxed, natural etc. I love it all because it shows how versatile we are. This is simply me reflecting personally on the fact that I find it wild that I couldn’t walk outside my house with the hair the grows from my scalp just chilling. I find it so jarring that society had beaten me and every other Black person in the US over the head with that. The point of this is that I do hope that we are all doing what we want to do with our hair (our bodies, our clothes) because it is really what we WANT to do. That’s nobody else’s business, but your own.
I love you, I love me (and clearly I love a good em dash)—let’s just live life.
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