hair is
confidence hair is beauty
hair is art at some point in time
somebody somewhere said the phrase
it's just hair i'm not sure who
originated that phrase but i'm inclined
to believe that they were not a black
girl
because all black girls know that hair
is not
just hair hair is a very big deal
in the female black community miss me
with that whole hair is just hair
whether it be bantu knots or cornrows
or box braids or dreads locks whatever
it may be
you can tell a lot about a black girl
based on how she chooses to wear her
hair
our hair is just so versatile that we
really can
do anything with it
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a black girl's hair is an extension of
her personal identity
when you go through life as a black girl
you spend most of it
being told how you should look if you
want to be deemed
acceptable or attractive in society when
you hate your hair
or view it as ugly it's really hard not
to view yourself
in that same negative light when i got
my very first perm
back when i was 12 that was the first
time in my
life that i ever felt pretty
i went to school thinking like yo this
is great
my hair is straight i look great my
crush is going to notice me today
the kid's not going to bully me in
school for my hair no more when i got to
college
i was starting to reject those
eurocentric beauty standards that had
been
ingrained in me my whole life instead i
just wanted to look like myself
but because i had spent the last decade
getting perms i didn't even know what my
natural self to look like anymore i
wasn't really excited to go natural but
at the same time it felt necessary
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when you decide to completely ignore
all of these societal expectations that
everybody's putting on you
and just rock your hair naturally it is
an act of rebellion
it's saying that i don't really care how
you think my hair should look
this is how it looks naturally and this
is how i'm gonna wear it i know my
freaking hair looks good
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to be comfortable and confident in your
natural hair is a very
powerful feeling i feel powerful as hell
right now
10 years ago i would have never ever
ever
even left the house in my natural hair
let alone allowed myself to be filmed on
camera in it
this narrative that hair is just hair is
wildly inaccurate
overcoming hair discrimination is a huge
obstacle that most black girls have to
overcome in life in order to reach this
place of
peace and self-acceptance to say
hair is just hair it completely
dismisses that journey that we go
through
not to mention if hair was just hair we
wouldn't need literal
laws in place to protect our hair from
society
hair is power hair is
self-expression hair is experience
hair is freedom hair is
magical especially black hair
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you