‘Love-hate’ is the best way to define the relationship I have with my hair. There are days when I absolutely love it, and others when I see it as too big, too frizzy, too different from everybody else.

The Black Lives Matter movement was a real eye opener for me and played a strong role in my hair acceptance journey.
Being mixed-race, I always struggled with both sides of my identity and the emergence of this movement made me wake up and think more deeply about my black heritage. It helped me realise that everything I’ve done so far was just trying to fit in with my white heritage more so than my black side.
I am now happy I embrace the latter a lot more.

I was one of the only black kids in the area where I grew up. All of my friends were white, had blue eyes and beautiful long straight hair.
They would get more attention from boys, would have more opportunity to experiment different things with make-up and I didn’t. I desperately wanted these things so I would do anything to fit in, and straightening my hair was part of the process.

Curly haired women are now getting more coverage but I don’t think it has to do with our hair but more with the interest in black and mixed-race women that almost sprung out of nowhere in the past year.

However, I still think that more needs to be done so more people would be encouraged to embrace their natural hair.