My Bad Hair is Good Hair

"What’s up with all that bad hair?”

Those were the first words I heard from a family friend that I had not seen in years. The last time that I heard from this person, their life seemed all too overcome with the tribulations of alcoholism and death, that I assumed my hair would have been the least of his worries.

It was also the first time that I had started wearing my hair the way that it grew out of my head. No gel that flattened my hair texture, no daily hair washing that dried out my hair (but made it extremely easy to slick it down), and no excessive heat. I wore my hair in the same slick bun throughout my first year of high school and the year prior, so much so that people constantly asked if I would ever show them what my hair looked like down, or if I had any pictures of my hair straightened. I would also get a plethora of more annoying questions, like how long my hair was when it was down or if my bun was a wig.

Until recent years, I couldn’t figure out why these specific questions bothered me. Now older, I realize that it is because they already had an answer made for me, ones whose logic derived from stereotypes of Black women’s hair. None of these assumptions had sustenance, and I knew this, but they bothered me anyway. I knew that Black women could grow hair, but I was still ashamed of mine.

A couple of days before that day, I fed my mother and sister an entire lecture about how the Dominican obsession with calling Afro-textured hair "pelo malo" or "bad hair" was rooted in anti-Blackness and Eurocentrism, promoting the idea that everything that mirrored Blackness was ugly and that we must try to adhere to whiteness in every aspect, even if it meant damaging our hair with heat and relaxers. Although I’ve given the same speech more than 20 times since then because my mother still occasionally catches herself saying "pelo malo" when describing hair like mine, I felt it was the reason she was quick to come to my defense and correct that person and tell him that I did not have bad hair.

Even though I look back and cringe at it, I went to my room and cried after, but lied and said I had a headache when asked where I went. It was not my first experience with texturism, but it was the most pungent. Not only because of its racism but because I realized that being a perpetrator of racism surpassed all of his other, more valid worries. He wasn’t worried about the police brutality plaguing his country, or how gentrification was killing the people of his island and their housing during COVID. I’m not saying that the lives of Dominicans must be politicized because of the work we have left to do, but that we are so oblivious to said work that we continue to normalize such behavior and disregard any type of progressiveness in our community, even in our daily speech.

Texturism, sometimes labeled the nasty cousin of colorism alongside featurism, is described as “a preference for hair with smoother/looser texture, and the discrimination against people with kinkier, coarse hair within the same race.” Looser hair textures have closer proximity to what is idealized as “good hair,” which essentially is straight hair.

Because I have always had coarser hair (4a, for those who like the curl pattern chart), I never thought that I could have internalized texturism. That was until I took a closer look at the features that I wished for when I was younger, so much so that I would combine these wishes with my love for writing.

In my old room, I have a large polka-dot book that although I thought would be a sweet moment looking back on, was rather bittersweet, as it had nothing that I look for in books today. Of course, being that I wrote this book when I was 9-10, I could not have known or acted as the connoisseur of diversity and representation (especially because it was never in my history books or the other non-fiction books I read at the time), but it was telling of Eurocentrism’s impact on me at such a young age.

One of the characters was Summer (I had a weird fixation for naming my characters seasons) who had straight hair, and blue eyes, who falls in love with a boy with the same features during summer break. Another character had green eyes and straight, brown hair. That was my diversity, different varieties of the same, harmful ideology.

I could not escape from texturism even outside of my stories, as I would hear whispers from the lady working in my head at the Dominican salon I went to every week with my aunt about how difficult my hair was to work with. From my mom, although definitely less harsh, I would hear comments as well about how rebellious my hair was when she tried to slick or press it.

My mother, who has taught me a lot about the beauty of Blackness despite sometimes not knowing it herself, was unable to teach me about the beauty of my hair and hair like mine. This was because my mother has a much more loose hair texture, one she would call “ demasiado bueno” or “too good.”

I got my hair texture from my father, who I heard used to wear a faded Afro when he was younger. He has never grown it out, nor shown appreciation for it today, so it was impossible to rely on him to learn to appreciate my own. Sometimes, he asks what I’ll do with my hair when I have styled my Afro as if my hair was not already done. Other days, he’ll say my “pajón” (most times used with a negative connotation) or Afro in English, is fitting and that I should wear it out more. This was not surprising of him, as my dad has always shown ignorance with topics like these, and will do everything in his power to refrain from claiming Blackness, something that he believes his fair skin allows him to do. Once, when he was asked which of his parents were fair-skinned out of curiosity, he ended his response by mentioning how his mother, now deceased, was Indigenous. She was a Black woman.

None of my siblings had my hair type, so they canceled out too. My aunt, the sister of my father, did!

That’s right, I remembered. I have never seen her hair without a silk press. She never missed a salon appointment to straighten her hair. I always recall the face she made when describing my hair in a casual conversation with other women in my family, saying that it was just like that of her mothers. It wasn’t in an admirable manner, more like one of distress and disgust. She was the same one who put my hair in braids before I went off to school in the morning because my mother had to be at her factory job early. I can only hope she did not look at it with the same face then when I sat below her.

It took me my sophomore year of high school to start wearing my hair out with no product, just some water, oil, and a hair pick. Looking back, I wouldn’t even consider it my first time, since school was virtual that year and I could wear it without anybody actually seeing me.

In my junior year, I got as close as I can to wearing my natural hair without actually wearing it. I wore 36-inch faux locs for as long as I could, before realizing that I would eventually have to love my hair the way that it grew.

I have a younger cousin with a hair texture almost identical to mine, who always wears it out. Being the only two people in the house with it proudly, me being older, I always take the opportunity to remind him of the versatility within the beauty that is an Afro. Especially now, realizing that I have given myself traction alopecia with all of my tight hairstyles in attempts to hide my hair texture, I wish for him and other Black kids only the best experiences and love with the hair on their heads.

Subscribing to texturism means that I would pass it on to the youth in my family that look at me and others for guidance. It would also mean that, if the world heals in time for me to wish to bring Black children into it without unpromised safety, I would also pass it on to them.

Good hair is hair that is taken care of. Kinky hair, needing some of the most maintenance, is exactly that.