ST. LOUIS — Hundreds of people gathered at Tower Grove Park Sunday for some love for hair, but not just hair, or just tightly coiled hair.
From 12pm to 7pm, braids, Afros, locs, twists, Bantu knots, puffballs and more were everywhere you looked at Frizzfest, the 6th annual nature festival. The event focuses on making the African American community, especially Black women, feel safe and seen.
5 Your Side spoke to several attendees about their personal hair journeys and the importance of celebration.
hair tales
“I would say my hair journey has been very long and healing. I didn’t have a good relationship with growing hair. My hair was really thick, so my mom used to touch my hair almost every other day. I was getting my hair done,” Foster said. . “I had a lot of hair, but I didn’t have any natural hair care products to take care of it. But as I got older, the natural revolution started happening in the early 2000s, and I started embracing my hair. It became.”
“I went natural probably 12 years ago. I’ve had straight hair for most of my life, and the transition was hard. Physically, emotionally, and socially. Natural hair. As a Black woman in a STEM field where there are a lot of people, it’s not widely accepted.”In my field, even when you get to a place where you can let your hair down, you get to a place where it’s okay to let your hair be… With hair coming out of my head like this, people will think I’m doing something extreme,” Moore said.
She jokingly said that sometimes she punishes her hair.
“The way God created you is the way God intended, and everything about you is perfect just the way it is,” Moore said.
“I started with locs and ended up cutting it just to be in solidarity with my mother, who is a breast cancer survivor,” Ridgell said. “Thank the Lord. She is in remission. Her condition has improved. Now she has locs, which is amazing.” .. Our hair is so much It’s so crazy to experience different colors. ”
Ridgell loves being able to style her hair in different ways.
“Hair to me is like an art form. … When it looks good and feels good, it’s the best thing. I love that.”
“I used to have a very dark personality, but at the top I was a lovely person,” Williams said. “I had to be okay with letting go. … I went to the barber every two weeks and got in line the next week. I had a lot of thinning on the top of my head, so I started going bald. It wasn’t bald’ crazy obsession. ”
Williams believes his beard made letting go of his hair easier.
“I became comfortable growing a beard at a time when it wasn’t really cool to grow a beard, so I’ve been growing a beard since about 2010,” Williams said. “I think it’s important to embrace your natural hair. …Whether it’s naturally straight or naturally curly.”
He said it’s an accessory, but it doesn’t have to define you if you lose it.
Why is this important?
Dove says on its website that 81% of black girls attending majority-white schools have wanted to straighten their hair, and 66% of black girls attending majority-white schools have experienced discrimination. 45% of Black girls in all schools shared that they faced discrimination, and 47% shared that they were discriminated against. of black mothers report hair-related discrimination.
Bills banning discrimination based on hair type or style have passed in 27 states, but 23 states, including Missouri, have not.
“We have to be more interested in what’s in our students’ heads than what’s coming out of them. Being distracted by someone’s hair. If so, you may need to talk to your doctor about it, but it’s not the child’s problem,” Democratic state Rep. Rachel Proudy, a teacher and school counselor, said in a letter to the House in March. . .
The Missouri Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair Act (CROWN Act) has stalled. The only cities in the state where the bill is law are St. Louis and Kansas City, according to the Crown Law website.
The bill has been filed, according to the Missouri Senate website. The bill was also approved in committee and returned to the full House by the committee in August 2023.
In the same letter to House Republican Speaker Dean Plotcher, he wrote, “Throughout the hearing process, young people testified about their experiences of being made to feel uncomfortable about their natural hairstyles in school. “This is another way to let all students know they are welcome and valued, and we at the Missouri House want to see them succeed.”
So the question is, what’s on hold?
Missouri Representative Lukeisha Bosley, 79th District, said there is always deadlock in the Senate.
She has consistently advocated for this bill for the past six years.
“Right now, what I’m able to work with other members of the state to do is work at the local level and get King’s Law passed as an ordinance. We worked with Shameem Clark Hubbard and Councilman Rita Days to get King’s Law or a version of it passed in St. Louis County and the City of St. Louis, and we got it passed in Congress so that it became law in the state. We still have those protections, and our academics have them in our schools.”
Bosley shared some of her hair stories and described one of them as a defining moment.
“I was campaigning. I was actually running for a state representative seat at 24 years old. I was told I had to do something about my hair. Your hair was just wild. It got out of hand. So I became a little submissive. I ended up wearing a wig, which was the worst decision of my life, and I wore it for hours and hours, sometimes in 100 degree temperatures. “I wore this wig and advertised outside for days in extreme weather,” she said. One day it was so hot that I snatched this wig off my head while I was knocking on the door. In that moment, I realized that I didn’t have to conform to who I was or what people needed me to be. There was no space to be a representative, no need to conform to being a pure soul who just wanted to do good. ”
Ms Bosley confessed that she felt part of her identity was mistaken, but then found it again.
She said this is not a political statement or tool.
According to a 2023 study by LinkedIn and Dove, 41% of black women change their hair for a job interview.
Since that moment, Bosley achieved professional and personal success. She also learned that by wearing her tightly curled hair openly, she inspires others to do the same.
Bosley remembers a girl coming up to him in tears after a panel discussion.
“I’m going to start decorating my hair. I never loved my hair until I saw you talking about loving your hair,” Bosley recalled. “God allowed me to be a vessel to show you that I love you because I created you in such a beautiful way and you were everything you needed.”
Bosley then shared another story from her childhood about her untainted love for herself.
“It was photo day, and my mom ironed my hair and hot-combed my hair to make it nice and nice and straight,” Bosley recalled. “I was going to school. By the time I took the photo, my hair was so big and so bushy. And to this day, it’s one of my favorite photos. Because back then ‘Cause I didn’t know it.’ It was a part of me, I always loved big hair, but in that moment, I wasn’t like my hair was messy and I was crying. ”
The third-grade photo remains Bosley’s favorite school photo.
FrizzFest and the Crown Act are not about acceptance of others, Bosley passionately said, but about personal acceptance.
