A Quick Ting On The Black Girl Afro

1

ME, MYSELF AND MY AFRO

It's 1998. I am sitting on the living room floor in front of the TV, in-between my mum's legs, watching The Lion King on video tape. My mum holds a thick-toothed comb and scores it across my scalp. She parts my hair into six equal sections. Taking the first section, she combs through my hair, starting from the ends and slowly making her way towards my roots. My tight curls, like always, protest against my mother's motion. She rakes through them more firmly. I give a sharp inhale and rub my hand on my scalp, whilst trying to wiggle my way out from the clasp of her legs. She nudges my hand away with the comb and calmly says, 'don't move or it will hurt even more'. I know this, but I can't help but flinch and squirm as she weaves my hair into thick plaits. She blows gently on my scalp. I'm not sure if it helps, but it gives me some comfort.

Experiences like this form some of my earliest childhood memories. My daily routine as a child involved my mum cleaning, detangling and neatly styling my hair each morning to ensure that I was ready for school. By the time my mum would collect me at the end of the day, she could barely recognise the immaculate hairstyle that once was. With the loose stray hairs and unravelled plaits all over the place, my mother was convinced that I spent my days wrestling rather than sitting in lessons. Our evenings would consist of freeing my hair of the braids and letting my hair loose. It wouldn't be long before my mum would instruct me to sit down so that she could comb the tangles out of my thick hair-it was a moment I dreaded for many years. It was a painful ordeal that often left me on the verge of tears. To make me feel better, my mum would massage my scalp with oils whilst we watched TV. Now, I look back on these memories with nostalgia. Getting my hair done provided me with deeply intimate moments with my mother. Even though I didn't always enjoy it, I generally felt soothed when she was tending to my hair. There was something incredibly reassuring about being in her grasp, her hands working fervently through my scalp. It felt safe. It felt like home.

I loved Disney films as a child and was particularly fond of the character of Pocahontas, not just because of her songs (although she did have some classics. give Pocahontas her Grammys right now!). My draw towards Pocahontas was because of her brown skin. Here was a character who looked more like me than any other character I had ever seen. Even so, if you have seen me and Pocahontas, you will know how wildly different we are, but she was all I had. She was the character that I always wanted to dress up as for World Book Day or any other event that required a fancy dress costume. I loved her long waist-length hair; it wasn't the usual blonde or mouse-brown hair on all the other Disney princesses-it was black like mine. However, there was one discrepancy. Her hair was dead straight. There seemed to be no place for curly hair in Disney films. As a result, I found myself yearning for Pocahontas's straight hair. In front of the mirror, I would hold some of my tight curls and slowly pull, stretching them out until they were almost straight. Eventually, I would let go of my hair and watch it spring back into its usual zigzag shape. I would stay staring at my afro in the mirror, envisioning what it would be like to have long, flowing, straight hair. This childhood ritual is one that many Black women could probably relate to at one stage in their lives.

Interestingly, the desire to have straight hair was not motivated by how I was viewed by others, but more by how I wanted to see myself. Over the course of my life, I have felt many emotions towards and about my hair, from indifference to curiosity, which would later become embarrassment followed by hatred. Today, I only feel love and acceptance towards my hair, which is a far cry from the young Zainab who used to pull at her curls hoping they would magically straighten.

***

Family played a huge role in how I understood and saw my hair as a child. My first memory of other people's perceptions of my hair relates to one of my Ghanaian aunts. She was actually my late father's cousin, but I referred to her as my auntie, as is typically done in African homes. My dad passed away before I was old enough to start school, and it was this auntie who would look after me whilst my mum was at work. Whenever I would interact with her, she would greet me with a big hug and say, 'give me some of your hair, you have enough for me too!' This may seem like a trivial interaction, but it would be my auntie's positive assertions that sparked my initial curiosity about my hair. Her comments would make me feel special and proud of my hair. Unbeknownst to my auntie or myself at the time, she set an important foundation in my hair journey, one that I would at times stray from but would eventually come back to.

Being the youngest out of three, my older sisters, Zahra and Bishara, were girls I looked up to. Being respectively six and four years older than me, I witnessed them starting secondary school, entering their teenage years and discovering themselves whilst I was still a child. I would watch them experimenting with their hair at a time when I was too young to manage my own. We'd go to the local Black hair shop with my mum and scour the aisles like children in a sweetshop. These shops had it all-colourful shampoos, conditioners, moisturisers, wigs, combs, make-up, jewellery, perfumes and creams!

Under my mum's instructions, we would grab the necessary items from the shelves and place them into our basket before rushing home to review our inventory. This hair shopping routine was not something exclusive to us; many Black girls and women have undergone and continue to undergo this sacred pilgrimage. As per the routine, once we had arrived home, we would sit eagerly in our bedroom and I would get to observe my sisters lay out their new brushes, thick and thin-toothed combs, beads, rubber bands and hair gels. It was the stuff of beautifying dreams. My sisters would trace their hands over colourful packet after colourful packet, and eventually pick up the gel container and rip open a bag full of beads. Then the fun part would begin-my sisters would begin plaiting, twisting, tying or slicking their hair into intricate styles. I would stare in awe. The versatility of Black hair, even then, blew me away and I couldn't wait until I could learn to style my own.

I was about eight years old when my sisters first discovered hair relaxer, a chemical product that alters your hair to make it straight. Although my mum disapproved of their use of hair relaxer, it was more important to her that my siblings had the freedom to experiment with their hair. Those of you who have used or come across hair relaxers before will understand what I mean when I say that the smell of that product is truly unforgettable! For those of you who haven't smelt the product, it is something that exudes a pungent and suffocating stench, one that takes me straight back to watching my sisters lather that thick white cream onto their hair. Once the cream's burning became almost unbearable, my sisters would rush to the bathroom to wash out the chemical and observe the result.

The outcome was the transformation of their tight curls into soft, straight strands. This was the first time I saw Afro hair suddenly become straight-just like Pocahontas's hair! As a child, this was the stuff of magic. I was fascinated at how Black hair, which was so curly by nature, could become so straight.

Once I had entered my teenage years, my ideals surrounding Black hair were almost solely influenced by societal standards of beauty, which sadly meant that Afro-textured hair was not something that I looked upon favourably. It was also around this time that my sisters realised the negative effects of chemical relaxers on their hair and stopped using it. As a result, my family forbade me from ever relaxing my hair. At the time, I was devastated-my kinky, fuzzy hair wasn't cool, and my teenage years were meant to be my time to experiment with my hair. Upon reflection, I'm grateful for my family's collective decision to protect my hair.

So there I was: a short, nerdy, Black teenager with Afro hair, going to school in the middle-class suburbs. You know where this is going, right?

My school days consisted of students shoving their hands into my hair to feel how 'fluffy' it was. The nicer kids would give my hair a squeeze or bury their face in it whilst 'complimenting' me by describing my hair as something relatively inoffensive, such as a cloud or pillow. The meaner kids would make nasty comments and throw bits of paper or stick pencils in my hair. I vividly recall wearing my hair in two bunches ('Afro puffs') and hearing a boy in my class announce that, 'Zainab has gorilla testicles on her head', and as you can imagine, the class erupted in a loud chorus of laughter, because that is just what teenagers do. I was 14 at the time. I rolled my eyes and shrugged the comment off as though I didn't care, but deep down I was filled with shame and embarrassment.

With Black people my age, it wasn't so straightforward either. Even amongst my own community, I still felt like an outsider, in part, because so many of my peers wore extensions and relaxed their hair. As the years would go by, I began to receive comments from Black people (friends and strangers alike), which added to the complex feelings I already felt towards my hair:

'I wish I had hair like yours, mine...