My Hair, My Enemy No More

Hello 2021.

What should I promise you? To lose the 20 pounds I have gained since turning 40? Probably. To pay off debt? Most obviously. To invest in my well-being by meditating daily? Another worthy goal.

But this year...none of that. First and foremost in my 46th year...I want to accept me. And to do that, I feel like I have to accept my hair. So 2021...I resolve that this is the year I finally feel good about being a Curl Girl.

When I was a little girl in the 1970s, I was like all the other little Asian girls and boys who had beautiful, straight, shiny, jetblack, unisex, bowlcut hair. You know what I'm talking about. I bet you can picture that bowlcut in your mind's eye along with the striped Sesame Street Bert and Ernie shirts and brown corduroy bell-bottoms. As I look back at pictures of myself frolicking with my cousins in my youth I think...yes...I am like my other people!

But something happened around the time I turned 8. My hair betrayed me. Instead of being slippery and falling like one onyx curtain when brushed, it now came out of my head coarse and curly. Unruly. I no longer looked like my cousins or any other Asian-Canadians I knew. An Asian with CURLY hair? Why. Would. Such. A. Thing. Happen? It was the equivalent of getting straight C's in school! It just did not happen in Asian families.

My relatives would say to me with condescending straight-haired disdain, "Your hair is like steel wool." I desperately wanted to be like my other straight-haired family members!

My mom did not know what to do. She just kept brushing it. And any curly haired person knows that you just cannot brush out curly hair! I inherited curly girl hair problems that nobody in my family could relate to. The triangle head. The bush that would appear as soon as there was an iota of humidity in the air. Endless elastic bands which broke because my ponytail was too thick. Taking an hour to straighten my hair only to have it "boing" back to its usual frizzy self when met with the slightest of raindrops. Bugs, twigs and leaves taking refuge in the bird's nest on top of my head. And my personal favourite - being made fun of by my Grade 6 crush. He coined the term "Medusa" to describe my hair, getting everyone in the class to follow suit. That lasted the whole year. Man, kids can be douche-y.

For years, I struggled to maintain the straight-haired beauty standard circa Jennifer Aniston's late 90s/early 2000s post-Rachel haircut. Many a pretty coin were spent on hair salon blowouts. And when I finally dared to go "curly", it was artificial. I was bogus. Those weren't my real curls. They were made from a curling wand to encourage the curls to go the way I wanted. To eliminate the frizz.

I know, I know. First girl problems. You got food on your table? The health of your children? Friends? Family? A home? A good job? Someone to love? Then quit bitching. And trust me, for all of the above, I feel incredibly blessed.

It's just that so much of how I saw myself came from my hair. I questioned my identity. Why didn't I look like the rest of my cousins? Who was in our gene pool that gave me these curls when no one else had them? I questioned my beauty. Would anyone ever find me and my frizzy mop attractive? For crying out loud, I even questioned gravity! As in, on very bad hair days, how was my hair able to stand on end like at the Science Centre?

So hair...it's time. I have to accept you. No straightening. No curl wanding. Just conditioned and towel-dried with a little bit of product. And in doing so, hopefully I will set myself on the right track to accepting all my insecurities - and can face any upcoming challenges - including my GREYING hair.