I was raised 100% by my lovely, supportive, European-Australian single mum. We lived largely in Australia, but also moved between Melbourne and Zanzibar on and off whilst I was growing up.
Maintaining my mixed Black hair has always been a battle for us both, taking me til my late teens/young adulthood to have some sort of control and understanding of it (thank you internet). When I was really little, I wouldn’t let mum brush my hair properly, being tender headed (which I only found out is the term recently), leaving me walking around with what was referred to as “the birds nest”. As I grew, I started to brush my hair on my own, but I found it hard and boring to try and comb out all those really tough knots with my ill equipped brush.
This brush, at the time, was the only brush I had ever found that could get through my hair easily, but after using literally the same brush for years (like til my early teens), it obviously got less and less effective. My mother found herself constantly picking up little hairballs I’d left around the house. These were knots that I couldn’t be bothered brushing out but could be easily ripped off the ends of my hair (cringe). Mum tried several different hair dressers over the years, none of which knew how to handle my hair. In Australia, hairdressers didn’t have any idea how to approach anything that had any semblance of Black hair. They found it hard to brush, coarse, and often employed a team to just brush it. All this achieved was making us all the more paranoid on returning home because anything less than a team of hairdressers to attend to my hair seemed like it wasn’t enough.
When living in Zanzibar, hairdressers said my hair was softer and thinner than they understood; and although it was easier in Zanzibar to manage my hair due to easy access to people that can braid, I was unable to get it properly cut and shaped.
Now, as far as I can recall, I’ve only ever had two really terrible haircuts/haircut experiences in my life. The second happened in my teens, and I have already created an artwork describing that experience (re: “Unnatural”), but the first was when I was around 8 years old and mum took me to a very high end hair dresser in Doncaster. This hair cut is forever referred to as “the shelf” in my family.
This butcher attempted to “layer” my hair, but ended up cutting it into what ended up looking like two separate pieces, leaving a shelf like shape that would take me 7+ years to grow out!
Growing up, my aim was to make my hair, what can only be described as, “smaller”. Over the last few years, I have ruminated on this idea and have reached the conclusion that I was tired of my hair always being different from the people around me. I am unsure as to what exactly my feelings were about this due to only really having one inadvertent response when mum would ask me how I wanted my hair. I would always say I wanted it to “go down”, motioning for it to be flatter, smaller, and, only recently realising, straighter.
I wanted people to stop touching my hair; starring at it; telling me they loved it because its “different” and poofy. I wanted my hair to be like the other girls’ at school; to fit in - again inadvertently hoping that it would stop the bullying. I wanted for it to be easier for hairdressers to cut and to style. I wanted people to stop asking whether I’ve ever straightened it; coming up with names that referenced it (e.g. sideshow bob); I wanted it to be softer; I wanted it to take up less room in every way. For it to be…smaller.
At 12, I started experimenting with straightening my hair, first asking my mum for a straightener, which of course she bought me. Before that, she didn’t even consider straightening my hair, she wanted to protect my curls, which I am grateful for now.
After getting my hair straightener, I ended up not having the patience to do my whole head. I ended up just straightening my fringe, loving seeing how long my hair really was, shelf still present.
At 13, I recall my mother’s friends asking whether I had straightened my whole head before; me then allowing them to try, only for them to give up half way through my head.
At this point mum had finally found a hairdresser that had some idea of what they were doing, helping me shape away and grow out “the shelf”. I also started experimenting with dying my hair.
Cut to age 14, staying at my then best friend’s house and her mum sees my sad little brush in my bag. The next day we go hunting for a new brush and by what seemed like a miracle we found one that catered to my hair.
A few years later, I start getting more involved in social politics and found the natural hair movement. I scoured the internet, finding products and ways of managing my hair. I started trimming/cutting/dying my hair myself after loosing touch with the former hairdresser. After the events that led to my accidental “Unnatural” situation, where my child self finally gets what she wants: her hair finally “goes down” by being blow dried and straightened; it leaves me with this feeling of identity loss, that I felt even after immediately washing the blow dry away when I got home.
From there I got more invested in actually liking my hair, wanting it bigger, to take up more room, to be healthier, to have more presence.
I am still learning to appreciate it. I have stopped resenting and actively hating it. I still don’t know how to properly braid it past a basic braid or two stand twist, but I’m excited to learn and have started looking for a black hair dresser to help me again.
In 2018, I let my mum brush my hair for the first time since i was 7. This piece represents my mum and I. She is a large part of my hair journey, always trying her best to cater to hair that she didn’t understand and wasn’t given any help understanding. Letting her brush my hair at 19 years old is something that I feel really connected us, was comforting, and I think we both enjoyed.
This piece represents the comfort of that and my hairs journey to this point.