Love is the only way to describe the relationship I have with my hair.
It's the favorite part of me. The way it looks on a day to day basis will define the way I will see myself. If it's a bad hair day, it is likely I will hate the way I look. However I wouldn't even think about changing its texture or wishing to have another hair type. My hair is simply a representation of me.
Everyone in my family have very thin straight hair. I always felt like an alien in my own circle but it doesn't mean that they weren't encouraging and supportive. In school I was also lucky enough to have a group of friends with curly hair. We were forming this tiny curly community which I believed helped each one of us to feel accepted, even though we respectively had different hair textures and skin tones.
Growing up I became more aware of the way I looked with my curls, and how people would react to it. "Why don't you straighten your hair?" is a question I was asked quite often, a question I never understood. I would never go to someone with straight hair and tell them to curl their hair just because I feel like it. No one does that really, so why is the other way around happening?
I believe it says a lot about the way curls are perceived - as something that isn't the norm, something that needs "fixing".