I totally wished I could have been a red head, a beautiful curly haired red head. And then I grew up, realized not only that I couldn’t, but that it wouldn’t look good.
I was talking to my friends about what we did to our hair when we were younger, and they were saying they really wanted the pin straight hair and tanned skin.
And this just cemented this idea to me that: we always want what we can’t have, don’t we?
Now they’ve accepted their hair, but it was hard and a journey.
It is a journey to go against the mainstream culture and the media’s image of beauty. I guess for me this wasn’t so much of a problem because no matter what I did, I could never be what that image was and I resigned myself to that. I could never change my skin and tan was only in style during summer.
But for those who were closer to that, there was a sense that if only x were different than they could be that image. I don’t know which is worse, but I feel like they had it harder. I never tried to perm my hair, I did dye it. I saw it as unattainable and moved on. The obsession with red curly hair died first with the acceptance of straight hair, and then with the acceptance of black hair.
But I thought I would just write here my school hood dream for kicks.