Millennial Crisis: You don't need to straighten your hair to be pretty

We're gonna stir the pot a little bit today, okay? Don't touch my hair. Hello, what's up? How's it going? Did you hear that? Wheeze lord. Hey there, my name is Greta and I started a series called the Millennial Crisis because quite frankly, I am a millennial in crisis. Pero like, we're gonna do something about it, okay? So basically, every episode of this series is gonna be, it's gonna revolve around a different topic that I'm personally dealing with. That's a lot of stuff, okay? But I was actually doing my hair this morning. No, no, no, no, no. Okay, let's backtrack to the actual source of the idea. Yesterday, I was doing some work and I was exploring some new music. I really have been getting into like soul, R&B, alternative hip-hop, that kind of vibe. And I came across the song Don't Touch My Hair by Solange. I hope I'm saying her name right. Beyonce's sister. I've heard the song before and I liked it, but I didn't really hear it before. You know, you like heard it, but you didn't really hear it. So I actually heard it yesterday and I was like, well, ----. And I actually looked at the lyrics and I was floored, okay? I was floored. So let me read you a little piece, a little snippet of the lyrics. So she says, Don't touch my hair when it's the feelings I wear. Don't touch my soul when it's the rhythm I know. Don't touch my crown. They say the vision I've found. Don't touch what's there when it's the feelings I wear. I, as you can see, have curly hair. I have a lot of hair. I have always had a lot of curly hair. And from the minute that I popped out of my mama, I had a lot of hair. I had a big, big helmet of big, curly, very frizzy hair. And I have always had this hair. I didn't really think too much about my hair when I was younger. Just thought, it's hair. It's not a big deal. I have a lot of it. Yes, I cry when my mom tries to comb through it for picture day. Yes, I don't have straight blonde hair like my other friends do, but it's hair. You know, I would look at my friends and see their straight blonde hair or just straight brown hair or just straight hair in general or even if it was like slightly wavier. I just noticed the difference, but that's all I did. I just noticed the difference. I didn't really acknowledge the difference. But I would look at my mom and I saw we had the same hair. She had curly hair. I came out of her. So I had curly hair. And that's all I really thought of it. It wasn't actually until like fifth grade. I remember I would go to the bathroom and I would wet my hands and then I would just pat my hair down. Because that's when I started to feel like it's too big. I don't know what about it made me insecure. It could just be the straight fact that I just didn't have the hair that everyone else had in the classroom. And I just feel like it's natural human tendencies to a natural human behavior to want to blend in. It's not necessarily that you don't want to be unique or you don't want to be your own person or an individual, but it's just that you kind of subconsciously know that if you look different, if you act different, if you say something out of the norm, you will likely get criticized or you will get judgment. And that's why as humans, we just crave conformity. And when you try to break away from that, it's seen as inspirational. It's seen as, wow, you're so brave or you're so courageous. Tangent aside, so basically fifth grade, it was when I was like, okay, this is a little interesting. Fast forward, really we can skip middle school because honey, I have suppressed the middle school memories in my brain. And in high school, I really felt that pressure. I felt the pressure of feeling like I looked messy. I felt like it was kind of like hindering me from being pretty. It was like, here I was thinking I had potential. My hair was blocking that potential because it's not what was considered beautiful. It wasn't what was considered pretty. Now I feel like a lot of more people, a lot of more women are finding it easier and finding more confidence to wear their hair natural. And I am here to tell you, honey, you do not need to straighten your hair to be pretty. And it's interesting because now being in my 20s, I see my hair so much more as just something that I inherited from my mom. That's what I used to think when I was little. It's just something that I inherited from my mom. And that's how it's gonna be. And now I see it as something so much more deeper than that. It's more than just inheritance. It's literally a symbol. It's a symbol of where I came from. I am Latina. Both my parents are from Mexico. La Ciudad de Mexico. El D.F. It's not just hair. And that's why when people ask, which is crazy to me, when they ask like Black women or when they ask anyone who has anything other than straight hair to touch their hair, it's kind of like it's so out of the norm that you have to touch it to feel that it's real. So in preparation of this video, I actually watched the short called Hair Love. And oh my god. I really like how they depicted the main character, the little girl, as a little girl because that's where it starts. It starts from all of the painful memories of having your mom or your dad or your sister, whoever it is, all that frustration that your hair causes the other person doing your hair. And not only does that make you feel bad, but it's also extremely painful because if they don't know what they're doing, then it's painful for the person getting their hair brushed. And just like I remember crying and it was like picture day and I wanted to just look like my other friends. I wanted my hair out of my face. If you haven't seen the short film, I will link it in the description box because honey, you need to see it. Just the experience that women go through, especially as little girls, not understanding why they don't look like their friends, not understanding why it's so painful or why just feeling beautiful is such a painful process. And that's not just with hair. I wish I could eradicate all of the Eurocentric beauty standards that exist, which I'll get to in a second. And that's not to say that you should never straighten your hair, that you should never experiment with your hair. Of course, just like clothes, hair is a form of experimentation. It is a form of expression. But if you feel like the reason you're wanting to change it is because you don't look like everyone else around you or someone's telling you that your hair is messy or unprofessional or whatever it may be. If a teacher tells you that your hair shouldn't be in braids or shouldn't be in dreads, they're ignorant. And it shouldn't be your job to change yourself for the pleasure of someone else. And because this is my first time talking about curly hair, I thought that I would do some research. Here I have my lovely computer. And let's do some research, shall we? Okay, so I literally googled history of curly hair. So I found an article by HJ, Hairdressers Journal International. It looks like it's a magazine. So it's called A Brief History of Curly Hair, 100 Years of Getting In Formation. So this was written in October 22nd, 2019. Yeah, let's just go through it together and see what they got to say. So throughout history, curls have been coiffed, relaxed, slathered in chemicals, and now with the rise of the natural hair movement. Oh my God, that's exactly what we were talking about. Thankfully embraced to celebrate every kink, coil, wave, we've put together a potted 100-year history of curls with a little expert help from the hair historian, Rachel Gibson. I did not know hair historians exist. That is fascinating. Okay, 1920s, Etan Krupp in Marceau Wave. So short hair was a controversial choice in the 1920s because it was seen as unfeminine. Women that dared to go short were regarded as bold, rebellious, and independent. That's actually still the case. I feel like I've heard so many machista, patriarchal, withholding men say that they wouldn't date a girl with short hair. So 1938, Denman is born. Driven by a desire to help his sister style her beautiful, curly, yet unruly hair, John Denman Dean created a revolutionary styling brush known as D3. 1940s, Veronica Lake Waves. Long and beautifully glossy, everyone wanted the waves of film noir actress Veronica Lake. So apparently Veronica's style was emulated by women across America until World War II struck and the U.S. War Department declared the hairstyle too dangerous to be worn for work in factories. 1950s, Hollywood Curls. Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Dorothy Dandridge, an array of girls with curls, natural or otherwise, starred in the lead roles of Hollywood movies. They set the trend for women using curling aids such as hot rollers, heated bristle brushes, and copious amounts of hairspray. 1960s, Civil Rights Natural Hair Movement. Black women who have previously straightened their hair were influenced by the Civil Rights Movement and jazz musicians such as Nina Simone to leave their hair in its natural form. For centuries, people with Afro hair were persecuted in America and Europe for their appearance. So the arrival of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s and the accompanying Black is Beautiful mantra was a defiant moment. Many African Americans chose to grow their hair longer and wear it naturally, signifying pride in their heritage and protesting racial discrimination and established standards of beauty. 1970s, Disc Bro. Donna Summer and Diana Ross inspired a generation to wear their hair big and brushed out. From big disco curls to long, hippie lengths, many of the most significant beauty trends from the 1970s were about a rejection of what had gone before. The 1980s, Jerry Curls. So invented by white chemist and hairdresser Robert Jerry Redding, co-founder of Redken. Oh my God. The eponymous, I'm trying. Jerry Curl was a permanent wave hairstyle hugely popular with African Americans during the 70s and 80s. So it was advertised as a low maintenance wash and wear style for Afro hair, which was allegedly safer and easier to take care of than a chemical relaxer. Okay, 1984, Ouidad Salon Opens. Today, many women find it easy to manage their hair through identifying their specific curly hair type. An idea popularized by Ouidad in the 80s when she started to classify hair in her curl specialist salon as loose, classic, tight, and kinky. 1990s, R&B Divas. This is actually, I was very excited about this part, hoping they would touch on that subject. It was all about perfectly smooth curls in the 90s thanks to R&B stars such as Mary J. Blythe and Destiny's Child. Although these celebrities likely wore curled wigs, weaves, and hair pieces, everyday women turned to hot tools to emulate their favorite star's looks. 2000s, Brazilian Blow-Dry Craze. Yup, with the aim of leaving curly hair smoother, more manageable, and frizz-free, the Brazilian blow-dry sounded like the holy grail for curly haired women. Brazilian blow-dry was a huge trend in the 2000s. Treatments used keratin and other proteins to strengthen and hydrate the hair, but as with most miracle trends, it wasn't quite as straightforward as frizz fears were led to believe. In 2019, it's cool to be woke. Activism and awareness has crept into more areas of our lives and we're embracing individuality more and more. There you go, ladies and gentlemen. The history, brief history, kind of summary of curly hair. And it kind of just shows you that with everything else in society, in the world, a lot of things are trends and a lot of things are socially constructed. So that's why you can't rely on society to tell you what's beautiful because it's gonna change. So this video doesn't really have a conclusion. I just want to say if you have curly hair, if you've ever felt down about it, if you've ever felt different, if you've ever felt frustrated, I am right there with you, sister and brother. You should embrace it and feel proud and feel powerful and know that your hair carries a lot of that story. What an interesting video I just made. But thank you for watching and hearing my curly hair journey. Curls are powerful and that's all I gotta say. I'm gonna leave it at that. But if you want to continue the conversation over on Instagram, I will be there. I'm always there. Another habit I need to break. But I will see you very soon in my next moment of crisis or maybe I'll have another revelation. We'll see. You'll see. But I will talk to you very soon. Bye.