I hated my hair for a long time. In high school, I would always try to flatten it out, get irritated by her stubborn refusal to sit up straight on my head like the rest of my friends, and use the restroom during the five-minute bell change at school. dampened it with sink water. The intense heat of Florida’s outdoor school didn’t help. By the end of class that day, I was waiting outside for the bus with a bird’s nest on my head and hatred for global warming, genetics, and my body’s inability to adapt.
I always acted before my hair got too long or unruly, opting for a haircut that would reduce hair growth and, if possible, eliminate frizz completely. It had no personality, just a shapeless mass that wished it wouldn’t embarrass me. I wasn’t a victim of external bullying, I was a victim of internal bullying. I was so angry at the cards life had dealt me and felt it was so unfair that I would never be able to be as attractive as the people I admired. I remember once showing my barber a photo of YouTuber Cody Ko, who was a comedy inspiration at the time, as a reference for what I wanted. I was shocked that she couldn’t magically make my hair straight like his, that I was still the same person after I left the chair. This was the summer before college, and I didn’t know much about it yet.
My hair was inherited from my mother. My mother is a curly-haired New York Jew, and I remember when I was little she used a lot of mousse every time we went out and always had to explain to my father about the dangers of moisture. Like me, she had a hard time accepting her natural curls. She had her hair professionally styled when I was 3 years old. I cried when she came home. I didn’t recognize her. There were lessons to be learned in that memory, but it took decades to get there.
My mother and I have suffered a combined 60 years of shame because of Ashkenazi Karl. The turning point for me came during the pandemic, when I rented an apartment in Florida with a longtime Jewish friend. I didn’t feel comfortable going to the hair salon due to the state’s lax pandemic restrictions, so I decided to grow my hair out. HAIM’s new album came out, so I baked Hanukkah cookies for Taylor Swift. It was the era of the Jews.
I continued to grow my hair, which meant learning how to manage it. I bought creams, shampoos, and serums to make my hair more bouncy, less frizzy, and tighter. It took me some time to find a routine that works well for me (and it’s still subject to change). When lockdowns lifted in mid-2021, vaccines started to roll out, and my extended family started reuniting, they all commented on how great my hair looked and how it had been secretly cut earlier. commented on the shocking difference. It suits me, they all said, and I began to believe it too. I loved the way it felt when I shook my head, the feeling of it falling on my forehead, in other words, how the irritation I felt at that deviation suddenly turned into pride.
That fall, I returned to college and met a friend I had made online who also wrote for the college newspaper. When I mentioned that we had the same curly brown hair, he asked if my hair was “natural.” When I asked her what she meant, she said that she actually had a perm. I was shocked. All my life I have wished that I could graft another hairstyle onto mine, but now that people are paying money to get hairstyles like mine, I did. It was a real journey.
Suddenly, I saw my type of hair everywhere. TikToks promoted beauty products for curly hair and tips on how to make your hair frizzy if you don’t have curly hair. Thousands of commenters professed to be jealous of Instagram influencers flaunting their hair. The consensus was that curly hair looks best with the trendy mullet (case in point: RuPaul’s Drag Race contestant Crystal Mecido). My classmates had beachy curls, and the other boys had long hair. After a long and scary journey to long hair’s emergence and acceptance, I’ve reached the zeitgeist.
It would be easy to be angry at these people for adopting a style without the self-hatred that I and other Jews experience – my culture is not your costume, etc. – but honestly However, it seems to be part of the process of understanding oneself. It’s a necessary and often difficult time for young adults who can open their phones and see hundreds of people more attractive than them in every app they open. Why do I get angry that others can reach self-actualization more easily than I can?
Part of the shame I felt about my hair growing up came from the fact that there weren’t many celebrities with curly hair that I could find myself in. Every attractive person on TV looked different than me, and curly hair is portrayed as an asset that it never was. Thankfully, there are now gorgeous Jewish men with curly hair who could easily be featured on a poster in a teenager’s room, including Timothée Chalamet, Jenny Slate, Josh O’Connor, Ilana Glazer, and Larry David. are named. Yes, I said.
There are still many days when I get angry about how thick my hair is. It’s just part of the process of becoming human (as a Jew). But now I get angry when I cut my hair too short and smile when people at work compliment my hair. I think most of the talk about “healing your inner child” is pretentious and pseudo-psychological, but the way I feel when someone runs their fingers through my hair or when I look in the mirror and think, , there is a special pain of joy that cannot be ignored. Just for a moment: God, I’m lucky.
