Brush — My Hair and My Heritage
Puerto Rico, “The Island of Enchantment”. I was born there. I learned to speak, read, and write there. I learned how to live there. I am a beautiful, eccentric blend of Spaniard, African, and native Taino heritage. A stark contrast to the eurocentrism that engulfed my childhood and adolescence.
My parents moved my family to the southern United States when I was 7 years old. I innately searched for people I could relate to but found that the majority of my peers were white. The girls I compared myself to had long straight or wavy hair that was easy to manage and looked good without much effort. These observations were new to me but even before, during my life on the island, eurocentrism sneaked its way into my peoples’ beliefs of what is considered beautiful and what is not. My mother would tell me stories of how her mother would force her curls into submission by forcing them around hair rollers and then demanding my mother sit under a hooded hair dryer for hours.
“Brush that hair, girl!” I heard this a lot while growing up.
When I was younger, I was embarrassed by my hair because it did not look like everyone else’s. My roots extend from my scalp in frizzy dark coils and smoothly stretch into dusky curly waves at the ends. Rarely, did I wear my hair curly and
even went so far as to beg my mom to let me get relaxers in my hair so that it would be easier to straighten.
When I did wear my hair curly, people would tell me to brush my hair or to put it up because it was frizzy. Some of my peers at school would put mechanical pencils in my hair because they knew the pencil would get stuck. I felt like an outsider. My hair did not look like the girls around me. Even the black girls would use weaves or style their hair in braids and twists.
When I was in middle school, social media was emerging and my friends would always post pictures on Myspace, then Facebook and Instagram. I never posted pictures with my curly hair and if I did, it was a day that my hair was “tamed” or in a specific hairstyle. Usually my hair was in a half-up half-down style, if I wore it naturally, in order to diminish the size of it. I straightened my hair for so long that my beautiful curls became waves … barely. I vividly remember going to the lake, getting my hair wet, and after coming out of the water and my hair drying, it was still almost fully straight. My thick and coarse hair was forced into straightness and it looked atrocious naturally.
Finally, when I started college, I decided that I was tired of having to straighten my hair for it to look good and I missed my curls. It was a hard transition. I knew that if I wanted my curls to return and for my hair to be healthy, I could not straighten it. I started off by straightening my hair only for holidays and wearing it naturally the rest of the year. Slowly, my gorgeous curls returned. I had to learn what products worked best for my hair type. I watched lots of Youtube videos on product reviews and tutorials. This process was a lot of trial and error. I hated the way my hair looked at first because the curls were more like waves and they were coarse and frizzy. My hair undoubtedly displayed the damage I had caused it. But mostly, I had to learn to fight the urge to look like everyone else.
It may sound silly, but wearing my hair naturally allows me to tether myself to the pure lifestyle of my people. This is to say that life in Puerto Rico is more rustic than in the United States. Natives can go to their backyard and grab fruits and vegetables to cook with for the day. Homes are cooled by opening windows because most houses do not have central air units. Most towns in Puerto Rico contain some sort of natural wonder that one can explore. This type of lifestyle encourages me to appreciate what truly matters in life, and to care for and cherish our natural surroundings.
I finally learned that my natural hair is stunning. My hair tells the story of who I am.
My hair symbolizes freedom, the way it surges from my scalp, embracing life allowing me to be me.
They want me to brush my hair. Brush it and do what? Brush out the curls into semi straight strands to blend in with the majority? Or eradicate my coils with direct heat from an iron, making my hair silky smooth? Or use a brush to entrap all of it into a bun or a ponytail, so they won’t have to look at it? So that it won’t catch their attention?
So they won’t be uncomfortable?
I won’t blend in.
My skin is brown with the undertones of the natives of my land. My stature is short, my hips are wide, my thighs are large. I embody my heritage in the way I walk, in the way I talk, in the way I live.
My hair is freedom. My hair is a part of me.
Naturally.
