Caring For My Daughter’s Curls Healed My Childhood Hair Trauma

Welcome to It’s Textured, a column where we untangle the joy, trauma, confusion, and frustration that can come with Black hair. This month, writer Shani Hillian shares how taking care of her daughter’s hair has opened up a path of healing for herself.

I sat as still as possible, anticipating the Marcel iron’s scorch as it inched closer and closer to my head. For about 45 mins, a stylist pressed my 3C curls into bone-straight silky strands. The salon smelled like burnt hair and the chair was uncomfortable but as a 10-year-old Black girl in the ’90s, I’d have sat through anything to get straight hair like Aaliyah and Monica. After every strand was pressed to perfection, I admired myself in the mirror, squealing with joy as I ran my fingers through my new hair. It was the first time I’d ever gotten my hair pressed—and I was hooked. From that day on, the high I’d get from straightening my hair came with an increasing belief that my curls were difficult, unmanageable, and not good enough.

My negative perception of my natural hair started with that first silk press. It only got worse in high school when I moved from a predominantly Black neighborhood in North Philadelphia to Voorhees, New Jersey, a predominantly white area with just a handful of Black, LatinX, and South Asian students at my school. It didn’t help that the starlets of the day all preferred straight styles: Alicia Keys with twists in the front, straight sleek hair in the back; Beyoncé and Brandy with the notorious micro braids. There was not a curly hairstyle in sight—neither on-screen nor IRL. All the influences around me pointed to the idea that my natural hair was not good enough. So, I either wanted my hair straight or in a protective style, never out in its natural, curly state. At the time, I didn’t think of it as trauma—I just thought of it as making my hair pretty.

At home, my mother often encouraged braids or other protective styles because, as a working mom, those were easier for her to maintain. I don’t believe this was because she didn’t think my natural curls were beautiful; she just didn’t have the capacity to teach me how to care for them. Without that education and validation, I saw my hair as something that needed to be tamed or hidden rather than celebrated and cared for. In my 20s, I, like many Black women my age, began my natural hair journey, during the early 2010s natural hair movement. I remember it as the Youtube era because everyone was getting their natural hair education from influencers like Hey Fran Hey, and Urban Bush Babes (two creators who, to me, set the trend of holistic, natural beauty during that time). There was a big shift from straight styles to intense natural hair care regimes including 10-step wash days including everything from pre-poos and hot oil treatments to DIY hair masks made with random household items. It took dedication, and I was on board, but even then, deep down I never truly embraced my curls—I simply tolerated them.