Kinky on Racialicious

I love to read about the experiences of other kinky-nappy-curly haired people regardless of their ethnicity and background. So I was delighted to read this article entitled Kinkosis (an essay) by guest author Safa Samiezade’-Yazd, on Racialicious.com. It is a wonderful read about an American woman of Iranian and Irish descent who comes to embrace her whole self, coils and all!

The entire piece was inspiring but here are a few excerpts that I found to be especially cool...

"My hair went curly in early adolescence, right around the time I hit middle school. I was a small, petite tweenster, and instead of fretting about breasts, which were hardly there, or periods, which were nonexistent, I poured my angst and energy into my newfound mop of kinky hair that sprung itself on me almost overnight. My father hated my curly hair. He said it made me look black."

"This ideology is pervasive, to the point that many times, we don’t even realize we’re buying into it. Beauty requires an acknowledged ugliness in something else, so in order to look damn good, someone else has to look like a train wreck. I remember being told as a child that curly hair is really a genetic mutation. I remember thinking I was a freak."

"Just look at our cosmetics industry. How many different types of foundation does a woman need to put on before she looks like a piece of dry, flaking cake? So when we’re confronted with opposing images of a woman with straight hair that’s styled with a curling iron, and a woman with free-styled kinky curls, the one with straight hair is going to come off as more mature, because her beauty routine takes more discipline."

"Perfection, or ideal beauty is really a distraction, especially amongst minorities, because instead of guiding us to look inward, it manipulates us to focus on outside projections that tell us how we should look and feel, and we become white-washed, so to speak; formulaic, sterile. The more Euro-centric you look, the easier it is to get taken seriously."

Funny how so many of us (curly kinky coily folks) experience similar things across racial and ethnic lines. At the end of the day, a curly journey is one of self-acceptance and we all have our own path to take to get there.

So what do you think of when you hear the word kinky? Does it always conjure up images of Black people or has your view expanded? Do you believe on African Americans can have Afros? I used to have strict views on race and ethnicity and hair, but slowly that is changing. What do you think?

Click HERE to read this article in its entirety.