[mellow music]
[Taylor] When I was first born,
I had so much hair on my head.
My mom said all the nurses at the hospital were like,
“Oh my God, she has so much hair.
[upbeat music]
[Camille] I just remember thinking,
I really loved how her hair looked
and how easy it was for her to manage.
I don’t think I ever told her, I want your hair,
but I just remember thinking,
I wish I had straight hair like my mom.
[upbeat music]
[Azani] It just feels like I’m doing my hair,
you know?
But I know that once I walk outside of this room
that it becomes something more.
[upbeat music]
I have not done my hair
in a natural healthy state by myself probably since I was
in seventh grade.
Yeah, with like having no relaxer on it, no heat damage.
Seventh grade was probably when my hair
was like the healthiest.
I don’t know if I had this thought consciously,
but as an older person now,
I honestly think that I just didn’t like my hair
and I thought it was ugly.
So I always really, really tried to keep it slicked back.
I just don’t think I wanted anybody to see it,
if I’m being honest.
Like I didn’t like it
and I just didn’t want anyone to see my hair.
In our neighborhood, it was mostly Japanese kids,
so basically all my friends were Japanese,
and then my mom, she’s Japanese,
so they all had really straight hair,
and I just saw how easy it was
for them to manage their hair.
So I was always really envious of them.
We were always outcasted as not being Japanese enough.
We would always get nitpicked for certain things like,
Oh, you’re not holding chopsticks right.”
Or like “Your skin’s dirty, or whatever.
I felt like that was one thing out of a lot of things
that I wanted to change.
[Azani] “How did you do that?
How does your hair get so curly?
How did your hair get so long?”
I just get those questions literally,
have gotten them since then until now.
Still all the time I get them and I work with kids a lot
and they ask me a lot like, Miss Z,
how did your hair grow overnight?
And I’m like, It’s magic, period.
That’s it.
It didn’t bother me when people asked me about my hair,
but I thought it was weird
that people didn’t have a better understanding of it.
I never thought about my hair as complicated
or out of the norm,
so I was confused as to why other people
were asking about it.
[mellow music]
[Taylor] Seeing other Black women embracing their
natural hair has inspired me to go natural.
It’s really special.
You can look like five different people
in the matter of a day.
[mellow music]
[Azani] I think my hair connects me
with other Black women in particular
because we can talk about our hair in a way
that other communities don’t.
[mellow music]
[Taylor] I definitely feel like my hair has
shaped me as a person and as a Black woman.
[Camille] I think it was DuBois who was like,
It’s not really how you see yourself,
you have to kind of balance how the world sees you, too.
[Azani] And sometimes it makes a statement
even if you don’t want it to,
’cause other people will perceive it a certain way
and perceive you a certain way based on your hair.
[mellow music]
But I learned to navigate the world assuming
that other people would feel that way about it.
[mellow music]
[Camille] I was able to find myself
and accept my own hair and recognize,
Oh, this is my Black.
This Black is beautiful too.
[mellow music]
That’s the beautiful thing about being Black.
It’s like there’s no definition of what it is or no limits.
Now I have respect for my hair
and like I didn’t really have any respect for it before.
Yes.
Oh, my arms.
Quick, quick, quick, quick.
Ow.
I think there are a lot of assumptions made
about why Black women choose
to style their hair in certain ways
and like sometimes it’s not that deep
and sometimes it’s way deeper than what people think it is.
[mellifluous music]
[Taylor] Being natural is definitely not easy,
but being natural is an experience within itself
and you have to learn and you have to fail
and you have to grow and that’s the whole point of it.
And I think that’s the beauty of it—is just learning.
[mellifluous music]
♪ Take me home ♪
♪ Take me home, oh yeah ♪
♪ Take me home ♪
[mellifluous music]
♪ Take me whole ♪
[mellifluous music]
[mellifluous music]
