Hair Struggle

Let’s talk about hair; The hair on your head. I feel the specification is needed because well, we’re mammals.

I think about my personal hair journey through adolescence and into adulthood and I wish I could go back in time and give myself a good shaking for how deluded I was and sometimes still am. It’s probably fair to say that many of us have a love/hate relationship with our hair. I spent my childhood hating my hair maybe 60% of the time – often wishing it was naturally straight and dried nice and flat after the shower and pool. I hated going to pool parties, not because I never had the slimmest waist (well, that too) but because of the cotton candy poof aftermath that lived on my scalp.

Certainly, every young woman has their own version of a hair struggle, despite their texture or length. In my early 20’s I started feeling that I was more beautiful with straight hair (I know; cringe). The damage I inflicted upon myself from repeated flat ironing and drugstore box hair dye didn’t help with self-love because my hair wasn’t even my hair anymore; it was fried, thinner and had an inconsistent curl pattern. What I wouldn’t give to have 14-year-old Evan hair. You don’t know what you have until it’s gone… or badly heat damaged.

I used to rationalize my constant use of heat by saying straight hair was just “easier”; there were days when I wouldn’t even brush it because I didn’t think I had to (stupid). Or the “straight hair just looks better with this outfit” excuse. Having straight hair in all my Instagram and Facebook photos didn’t help either because as well all know, our social media identity is often the only thing people see and I became the girl who never wore her hair curly. I was disappointed in myself, but I couldn’t stop. I remember feeling offended when someone would respond surprised if I said my hair is naturally curly; all while I thought to myself, “of course it’s naturally curly, you idiot”.

But how could I blame them!?

It was this back and forth battle with myself; wanting to be seen for who I was, yet never having the confidence to show that. Yet again, I had become my own worst enemy.  

When I moved to Los Angeles from Orange County in June 2012, I spent much of my time planning out how I wanted to the world to perceive me, or at least my peers. In my defense, I had significant downtime. I hadn’t started my graduate program yet, was living for free at a friend of my family’s home and had a half-ass internship at a video game production company that only really taught me how to seem like I was working hard while doing absolutely nothing of value.

Instagram was gaining a lot of popularity that year and I was becoming frighteningly consumed by it. Attention was gratifying and affirming for me and that meant the world. At this point, my hair was the longest it had ever been (in hindsight, too long), and my curls were reasonably healthy. The “Deva Cut” (a curl by curl hair cutting technique) was becoming a popular hair trend, at least in LA. Throughout college I always felt if I had tighter curl, I would be all that and then some. If I’m wearing my hair curly, I want it to be big, loud and statement making, not flat and lackluster. When you get a curl by curl cut, the overall volume of your hair increases. I thought this would be the push I needed to revive my curls and avoid heat. So, I took the leap of faith, spent $175 for the cut and kept it curly for a solid 7 days before I caved and reverted to my old ways – what a disgrace. And a waste of $175.

Over the last 5 years or so I’ve gone through phases of recommitting myself to my natural hair, growing tired of people’s comments about why my curly hair has now become wavy and how much better it looked before (“Oh my God Thank youuuu. I didn’t know that!”) My primary reason for recommitting is because I WANT to rock my curls! Contrary to the entire tone of this post, I love my hair; what it used to be, what it is now and what it could be.

I will be 30 next year; and if there were ever a time to become my most authentic self, I’d say this is it. The new 20’s, the “prime”, the grown and sexy, the “I’ve finally found myself” age. Trends will come and go…and then come back around 20 years later (thank God for the reemergence of 90’s fashion) – but self-love never fades.