An 18-by-24-inch poster of Diana Ross for her bedroom wall.
Hot pink Denman brushes.
Because yes, as a woman of biracial white and Afro-Caribbean lineage, my hair is also extremely curly.
Not that my daughter would have known this at the time.
Soon after she began asking for straightened hair, Tracee Ellis Ross launched the haircare line Pattern.
And slowlythen very suddenlyshe grew to love it.
A butterfly, if you will.
I had neither escaped, nor was I free.
I recently learned the term presentism, or the tendency to interpret past events through modern day values.
But while I was in there, the other chairs were never empty.
I was one of countless women with textured hair on a quest to flatten ourselves into a manageable oblivion.
And shortly into this experimentation, I became pregnant with my daughter.
When everything around me felt very tenuous, there was a surety in the management of my hair.
The routine was a life raft.
At the start of that summer, I stopped all straightening and heat treatment, cold turkey.
So I stayed the course.
The process has been, at best,profoundlyuncomfortable.
I am still too chicken shit to do The Big Chop, and my hair is high maintenance.
It demands attention, forethought, care.
Its growth these years, much like mine, has been stunningly imperfect.
Look under your straight hair, mommy!!
You have beautiful curly hair, just like me!
This was my first summer of natural hair.
In every year of my life prior, I would have been worried about sweating out my straight hair.
The salt burned my eyes, my ears filled with water.
But something amazing has happened.
My hair has begun to trust me.
And, years behind my own daughter, I have started to believe it.
This story appears in the 2024 Changemakers Issue ofMarie Claire.
In an interview about her real estate career?
Denim shorts on deck.
The Prince and Princess of Wales will mark their 14th anniversary on April 29.
