It's Time for Black Women to Admit They Hate Their Natural Hair

I have been wearing my natural hair for most of my childhood, but when I was 10-years-old, and entering into middle school, my mother decided to take me to the hair salon for a relaxer. She did not know how to do my hair and wanted me to feel comfortable amongst my peers. I hated relaxers, despised them actually. From ages 10-12, I got relaxers on a consistent basis even though they burned my scalp, because I had fine hair (genetically thin hair strands). I grew up in an area where white men would fly confederate flags off the back of their trucks and where some of the subdivisions had the word plantation in the name. I am telling you this background information so you can gain a general understanding as to why my mother was giving me relaxers. At 13, my friend was spending the night at my house and was telling me about her decision to go natural. This was back in 2013 when the natural hair community was just beginning to form online. She showed me youtube videos of women with beautiful big afros, and I was in awe. After she showed me this, I decided to join her and begin my natural hair journey. When I told my mother, she laughed and said I would be back to getting a relaxer in a few months. She underestimated me, because my scalp has not seen a glimpse of a relaxer since that day. A few months after I stopped getting relaxers, I clipped off my relaxed ends and started wearing twist outs. Even though my friend that inspired me to go on my natural hair journey went to a different school, I still wore my natural hair with pride. My school was full of racist rednecks and rich WASP suburbanites with pin-straight hair, and yet, I still walked into school with my natural hair in various hairstyles. I was brave. What I did was going against the norm, yet I still did it. That is the beauty that comes with unapologetically loving yourself and your features. You learn how to be brave and not give a damn about what anyone else is doing. When I come online and see women who are much older than me continue to make excuses for why they cannot wear their natural hair, I do not feel empathy anymore. I feel disgusted. How can you not see that your behaviors affect little Black girls? By constantly wearing wigs, you indirectly tell little Black girls that their hair is not beautiful. How are you, as a grown Black woman, not braver than my 13-year-old self who was just barely navigating being a Black teenage girl in a very white space? In this blog post, I am going to dissect and critique the bullshit excuses I hear Black women give for why they refuse to appreciate and continually disrespect the beautiful hair Mother Nature has given to them.

Excuse Number One: “Wigs are a protective style!” 

Many Black women claim they wear wigs as a temporary protective style so they can allow their natural hair some time to grow to their desired length. There are several issues with this statement. 1. There is no such thing as a protective style. Our hair does not need protecting. Our hair is the protector. The purpose of hair on the human body is to protect our skin from the environment and regulate our body temperature. 2. The appearance of long hair should not be a top priority during your natural hair journey. If you have type-4 hair like I do, it will shrink regardless of how long it is. It is imperative that Black women become comfortable with the way their hair looks in its shrunken state as trying to combat shrinkage will actually lead to breakage for most Black women. 3. The Black women who use this excuse usually never end up wearing their natural hair. Constantly wearing wigs give many Black women a form of hair dysmorphia where they become too used to how their hairline and face look with the wig on. Tiktok is full of formerly wig-addicted Black women showing off their traction alopecia. Their hairlines resemble that of an elderly man with severe male pattern baldness. How can something that is supposed to be protecting your hair destroy it? Wigs are not a protective style. They are an easy way for lazy Black women to neglect their hair.  Leaving your hair under wigs for months at a time, bragging about only washing it five times a year, and refusing to wear your natural hair out for more than two days at a time does not scream protection to me. Ironically, these same wig-wearing Black women fetishize and obsess over Indian women’s hair yet refuse to follow the hair routine habits of said Indian women. Wearing wigs and foregoing washing one’s scalp is not something I have seen Indian women promote online for hair growth. 

Excuse Number Two: “I can’t wear my natural hair out because we live in a white supremacist society!”

Some Black women claim they are too scared to wear their natural hair in public due to the presence of racism in society, but how come white supremacists and Black male incels making jokes, wojacks, or memes about Black women’s obvious weave addiction not seem to make wig-wearing Black women stop wearing wigs? I find it odd how Black women pick and choose what types of bigotries cause them to alter or permanently damage their appearance. For example, the hatred of fat women and colorism are much more prominent forms of discrimination that exist in society, yet we do not see Black women, en masse, rushing to become a size 2 or bleach their skin. Why does the “fat Black woman” stereotype not cause your average Black woman to become anorexic, yet a white coworker making one random comment about Black women’s hair at the office Christmas party causes so many of them to throw on a wig? Why do the stereotypes surrounding low-income Black women not cause them to behave better in public, not coddle criminals, and stop having an army of children out of wedlock? How do racist beauty standards seem to affect wig-addicted Black women when it comes to their hair but not their skin tone, weight, or behavior? This excuse is especially odd when you consider how a lot of these wig-wearing Black women do not date white men, so the opinions of white males who are racist should not matter to them in the slightest. Why is being discriminated against for their hair the hill many Black women want to die on? Why do a few rude comments make so many Black women immediately throw on a wig when having a darker skin tone or bigger body impacts one’s quality of life in a deeper way? This excuse does not fly for me because it makes no sense. This is an excuse Black women give so they do not have to unpack their own self-hatred and can place the blame on some imaginary “evil white man” scapegoat. They want to pretend like there is some oppressive outside force preventing them from wearing the natural hair that grows out of their own head. It allows them to pass blame onto other people. If Black women truly cared about the feelings of racists or felt affected by white supremacy, certain behaviors that are extremely prominent within the Black female demographic would not exist. 

Excuse Number Three: “Natural hair is too expensive!” 

 I find this excuse to be the most comical, so I saved it for last. Let me make one thing clear, Black women pick and choose what is expensive to them and what they make time for. When it’s time for a $300 wig to be installed or $100 acrylic nails to be placed onto their hands, finances and time are suddenly not an issue for Black women. Natural hair is not expensive. The issue is that Black women do not believe their natural hair is worthy of their time and money. Wigs are not cheap, yet these same Black women who scream about how expensive natural hair is still find the money to buy them. Matter of fact, many wig-wearing Black women pride themselves off of wearing expensive straight hair textured wigs and believe this makes them more “high class" than Black women who wear their natural hair. Whenever I hear a Black woman claim natural hair is too expensive, I remember all of the financially destructive behaviors Black women defend. Being a single mother is the number one thing that keeps countless Black women in poverty, yet many Black women will defend single motherhood until pigs start flying in the sky. Let me stop trying to be politically correct. If Black women were truly financially responsible, they would have stopped letting Black men have access to their wombs without marrying them first eons ago. They would have stopped dating Black men who are less educated or make less money than them eons ago. They would have prioritized family planning and sexual responsibility when it comes to child-rearing eons ago. The fake cries over natural hair being “too expensive” will fall on deaf ears because the majority of people in this country know that Black women, as a whole, are not financially responsible and something being expensive (such as having children out-of-wedlock) has never stopped your average Black woman from trying to acquire it.

The Harsh Truth: Most Black Women Do Not Like Their Natural Hair.  

Black women who wear wigs wear them because they do not like their natural hair. They do not like the fact that their hair is coily and not curly, wavy, or straight. They insist on describing their hair as curly when kinky/coily are more accurate descriptors, because they refuse to come to terms with the fact that they do not have loose curls. They do not like that it fluffs out into an afro instead of hanging down off their shoulders like other races of women. People who hate themselves will come up with all types of excuses, like the ones I listed above in this blog post, to justify their self-hatred. They might even try to delude themselves into believing their behavior is normal or common in other groups of people (ex: wig-wearing Black women trying to equate white women dyeing their hair to them wearing a texture of hair they do not have naturally). Wig-addicted Black women know that when they step outside in a wig that does not resemble their natural hair texture, they are admitting to the entire world that they deem themselves inferior. This is why they lash out at Black women who proudly wear their natural hair or keep pretending that there are large numbers of nonBlack women trying to “appropriate” African hairstyles. They do not like being reminded that their habit of wearing wigs 24/7 reinforces negative stereotypes about Black women’s desirability and fuels the superiority complex white, Asian, and Latina women feel over Black women because they see so many of us wearing their hair texture on our heads. While other races of women use their unique features to create revenue via fetishization or gain access to quality men, Black women view their unique hair texture as a cancerous tumor that must be removed, and neither I, nor anybody else, can force these Black women to appreciate the beauty in their kinky afro-textured hair. That is a journey they will have to go through on their own, the same way I went through my natural hair journey by myself at 13-years-old. Lastly, I need well meaning Black women to understand that wig-wearing Black women do not want to learn how to do their natural hair. They do not deem their natural hair worthy of respect. They do not deem their natural hair worthy of being taken care of. When curly hair specialists such as @monarchcurl came to Twitter to share her expertise on how to care for kinky hair properly, wig-addicted Black women attacked her, mocked her kinky coily hair for being short, and proceeded to call her ugly. To the Black women reading this blog post, you must understand that there is no helping a Black person with such deep self-hatred like this. If these Black women wanted to learn how to take care of their natural hair, they would have simply listened to @monarchcurl. It is 2024 and my empathy meter has run out. There is no more sympathy left at the sympathy shop. To Black women who do wear their natural hair, stop trying to make wig-wearing Black women love themselves. Let them keep showing the world how much they hate themselves. Let them keep being an embarrassing walking stereotype. Let them keep wondering why Becky, Priyanka, or Ming Lee feel inherently prettier than them or are constantly making sly comments about their desirability. Separate yourselves and your image from these lacefront lieutenants. Despite what these wig-wearing Black women say, yes, wearing your natural hair out loud and proud as a Black woman in the western world actually does make you better than Black women who wear wigs. May only the strong with moisturized scalps and weekly washed hair survive. May the weak and their nonexistent edges perish.