The complexities of feelings and emotions of wearing your natural, Afro-textured hair have been well documented over the years through spaces like the YouTube natural hair community, Black spaces like Black Beauty & Hair magazine, the likes of TikTok and of course here on the Black Beauty Hub, but today, Paige Lewin, host of Texture Talks podcast has morphed the complex relationship we have with our hair into book form, with the insightful and relatable guide; How To Love Your Afro.
The book drops today, but if you are itching for a peek at the pages, we have the exclusive excerpt below...
Learning to love your natural hair
Many of us with curly hair experience periods of insecurity when we first decide to return to our natural textures. When I first thought about taking off my wigs for good, I was overwhelmed with panic at the mere thought of walking around with my natural hair out. Faced with the hard truth that I was unable to love myself without something ‘extra’ braided in or glued over my hair made me feel an immense sense of sadness and shame. I put pressure on myself for feeling this way, forgetting to consider the historical and societal factors that existed long before I was born that played a monumental role in where those feelings came from in the first place.
Eurocentric beauty standards have been lauded for centuries as the pinnacle of attractiveness. Straight, flowing hair has been seen as desirable, while kinky, coily hair is often, to this day, deemed to be the less glamorous, unattractive or unkempt alternative. This perception of what is and isn’t beautiful has been passed down through generations from the days of slavery and, unfortunately, has become ingrained as the standard in many cultures, heavily impacting how we, as people, perceive our natural hair.
These toxic beauty standards imposed on our communities have led to behaviours from those outside it that make us feel singled out and othered in environments where we should feel comfortable. From people touching our hair without permission to workplace policies promoting unwritten dress codes that indirectly target and attack our curly hairstyles as ‘unprofessional’, we’re constantly bombarded with messages that our natural state is inferior.
With relaxers, straightening treatments and wigs being frequently hailed as the answer to our so-called ‘wild’, ‘unmanageable’ curly dispositions – even from those within our own communities – it’s no wonder so many of us find it challenging to see the beauty of the Afros that grow from our scalps.
Our feelings of disconnection are complex, and the roots from which this disconnection grows can’t be ignored when trying to understand how to overcome these psychological hurdles. Whether you’re starting to or continuing to explore how to accept your hair in its most natural state, please always remember that this cross isn’t yours to bear alone and that you’re not alone in how you feel. Give yourself grace and patience as you work to undo this cultural conditioning. Although it may take some time to overcome, once you do, it will be one of the most freeing feelings you’ll ever experience.
Reaching breaking point
You’ve learned about my breaking point and the journey that led me to finally say ‘enough is enough‘ and start taking the necessary steps to learn how to get comfortable with my Afro. All of our stories are different, as are our limitations. The truth is, before I had reached my limit, it would have taken a lot for anybody to sway me in any direction other than the one I was following. Even on my worst days – battling tirelessly with my lace wig at the bus stop on a windy day or painfully peeling away scabs from a freshly applied relaxer, relieved that there were only two this time rather than four or five – until I hit my limit, nothing and no one would have been a powerful enough motivator to push me down the path of embracing my natural hair.
The problem with feeling unable to make positive steps towards healthy hair practices until we’re at our breaking point is that we don’t know what the state of our hair, scalp or mental well-being will be when that time comes. While seeking professional help at the right time can offer you solutions if the causes of your problems are removed, if prolonged neglect isn’t addressed quickly, the outcome can lead to permanent damage.
But let’s be real. No matter how worrying this might sound in theory, until you’ve experienced a harrowing hair care diagnosis in real life, all of the above might still feel like a fictional scare tactic.
So, let’s do this instead.
If you’re still unsure about starting your natural hair care journey and battle internally with whether the timing is right, think about your line in the sand – your absolute last straw. What kind of extensive trauma would have to occur for you to be driven to return to your natural Afro texture? Write it down, read it back to yourself, and then ask yourself why it is that you would ever want to put yourself through that horrific, psychologically disturbing or emotionally taxing experience.
For me, imagining a future where I had lived a life of self-doubt, constantly striving to meet Eurocentric beauty standards, was too much to bear. Picturing the emotional turmoil, anxiety, psychological scars and physical damage that could result from another ten or twenty years of forcing my Afro into high-manipulation styles and subjecting it to harmful treatments was too far outside my comfort zone. I realised I loved myself too much to let that happen.
Ask yourself, how much are you willing to allow yourself to endure before you make a change? Remember, your natural hair is a part of who you are. It’s a reflection of your heritage, your culture and your identity. By embracing your Afro, you’re not just accepting your appearance; you’re embracing yourself. By intervening sooner rather than later, you're developing both a love for your hair, and also a real love for yourself.
Do you like your hair?
It’s not an easy question to answer, but it’s a pivotal one that needs you to be honest about how serious you are about this journey. When I started trying to wear my Afro, my answer to that question was no, I did not. At times, I’d have gone as far as to say I hated it, something people don’t like to admit that often. While this admission almost brought me to tears, I now realise how important this step was in helping me achieve healthy, natural hair. If we can’t ask ourselves the hard questions and answer them truthfully, it will be almost impossible to develop self-awareness about how deep our feelings about our Afros really go. Without this clarity, we won’t be able to craft solutions that will work.
It's too much hard work
Have you ever felt that maintaining your natural hair was complicated or required too much time, money or energy? I had this same mindset for many years. It was only when I acknowledged my true feelings about my Afro that I understood why those statements were utter nonsense – and why I had been so comfortable repeating them to myself with my full chest for over a decade.
I cast my mind back to my very first lace wig purchase. I basically waited at my door every single day for the courier to deliver it directly into my hands. I was so excited. When it was delivered, I had twenty YouTube videos bookmarked, ready to help me customise, install, style and maintain it. I cleared two whole days in my diary to make sure my education was undisturbed. Several nights, I stayed awake until past midnight, staring at my iPhone or laptop, spending hours learning everything there was to know about achieving the ultimate wig perfection.
No task felt too difficult, and no expense was spared. This was the attitude I honestly took towards every hairstyle I tried, except when it came to styling and caring for my Afro. To box braids, relaxers, curly perms and weaves, I gave my all. I pushed myself to overcome every hurdle at a pace to be able to master each style with patience and enthusiasm. Each time I made a mistake, I’d assess the reasons why, do more research, and come back with a new angle and the determination to try again until I got it right.
So why did I have the capacity to invest so heavily into those hairstyles, but when it came to my natural hair, it all seemed too much?
I realised it was because, with those styles, if I managed to grasp the techniques successfully, I was confident I would love how I’d look at the end of all my hard work. If I didn’t like the style I was trying to create or was unsure of how pretty I’d look wearing it, I wouldn’t have spent ten minutes on it, never mind what probably ended up being 10,000 hours, if not more. But when it came to my natural hair, I simply didn’t like it enough to make the effort. I had absolutely no confidence that I’d look beautiful wearing it, no matter how I styled it. So the thought of exerting even a fraction of the energy I spent perfecting all those other styles to care for my natural hair seemed almost comical to me.
Unless you genuinely like what you’re learning about, any time spent trying to get your head around it will feel like a bur- den that you’ll find any excuse in the world to avoid. Until I learned to love my natural texture and to see it as just as beautiful as the straighter, longer styles that had shaped my beauty standards for so long, every effort I made to care for my Afro felt like a complete waste of my time and money.
Learning to love your Afro will breed in you the kind of patience that’s needed to stay the course. So many of us try to make the journey back to our natural roots, but for whatever reason, we lose the motivation to keep going. A large part of this is down to having little to no love and appreciation for our Afros when we start that journey. If we don’t learn to like our hair, when we try to care for it we’ll be more inclined to experience feelings of frustration – and sometimes even contempt – over the smallest challenges, further reinforcing our belief that it’s just not good enough.
Have you ever heard of a self-fulfilling prophecy? It’s a term referring to a mindset where a belief or expectation comes true simply because one acts as if it were true. For example, if you believe that you’re going to have a bad day, you might sub- consciously act in ways that make that belief come true. You might be more irritable, less patient or less focused, which can lead to negative interactions and outcomes.
When you dislike your hair, it’s easy to make the excuse that it’s because it’s too difficult to handle, too much hard work, or not worth the effort. When you hold this belief, you don’t have the patience to learn what your Afro really needs or the motivation to care for it correctly. This lack of care results in your hair becoming damaged, dehydrated, broken – or in other words, difficult to manage. As a result of your hair care practices, your Afro naturally struggles to look how you want it to look, or style the way you want it to style, reinforcing the belief that you were right to avoid it all along. This cycle solidifies the negative narrative you hold about your natural hair and strengthens your bias- es – a self-fulfilling prophecy I was trapped in for countless years. To find enjoyment in your natural hair care journey, and to not be put off by setbacks or bumps in the road, you must acknowledge that you may not like your hair enough to even try.
Ask yourself, honestly, do I like my hair? If the answer is anything other than a confident yes, I absolutely love it – ask your- self what it is about your hair you don’t like. Continue probing like this, questioning why you feel the way you do, exploring where these feelings first came from, when they first started and who around you encouraged them. Working through these emotions can help you release them and begin a healthier relationship with your natural hair that’s rooted in appreciation, not frustration.
Give yourself grace versus making excuses
I used to conjure up every excuse in the book for why my Afro never needed to see the light of day. Any reason I could find to build a solid case for why wearing my Afro was simply not a viable option, I’d cosign. The truth is, I was holding onto a huge amount of fear, using these excuses as a shield to protect myself and absolve myself of any guilt for hiding my Afro away.
I had built up so many false narratives and worst-case scenarios in my mind as to what would happen if I dared wear my Afro hair in its natural form that these excuses kept me trapped in a prison of my own making for almost a decade. Unfortunately, when I became painfully aware of the cycle of avoidance I was feeding into, I didn’t feel liberated or joyful. I merely created a whole new antagonistic internal dialogue with myself, rooted in shame and frustration, for my inability to move past these feelings. I became pessimistic, unable to see the light at the end of the tunnel, weighing myself down with blame and breeding hostility towards myself for finding the journey so difficult.
We must learn how to find the subtle balance between giving ourselves grace and patience and being candid with what’s holding us back, so we can build the courage to face these fears and discomforts head on. It’s only when we accept the whys behind our behaviours and address the root causes of the excuses we’re making that we can allow ourselves to move forward and reach our full potential.
Registered clinical psychologist, podcaster and professor Dr Raquel Martin shed some much-needed light on how this issue is often one of the biggest psychological obstacles that gets in the way of people achieving their goals.
Dr Martin explained that grace is about recognising our humanity and imperfections. It’s the act of being kind to ourselves when we make mistakes and when we face challenges. Excus- es, on the other hand, often come from a place of avoidance or fear, preventing us from taking responsibility for our actions and holding us back from reaching our full potential. She high- lighted that when we make excuses, we might feel better temporarily, but it doesn’t lead to growth. Instead, it keeps us stuck. Dr Martin believes we should ask ourselves these questions to help us decide whether we’re giving ourselves grace or simply making excuses, with the caveat that we must answer honestly to benefit from the process:
1. Am I acknowledging my efforts and my progress?
2. Am I avoiding taking responsibility for my actions?
3. Is this self-compassion helping me grow or is it keeping me stuck?
4. Am I using this self-compassion to avoid fear or discomfort?
While taking a kind approach to your journey will help you foster a positive mindset, and develop the patience required to understand that hair growth takes time, being honest about your hair’s condition and goals and candidly acknowledging unhealthy hair practices is also crucial. You need clarity and balance between the two to properly manage any unrealistic expectations, avoid disappointment and make the necessary changes that will help your Afro to thrive.
Remember, the goal is progress, not perfection.
Nobody cares as much as you
It sounds harsh, but 90 per cent of the time, this is the truth. And the 10 per cent who do care are either projecting their insecurities onto you or inherently get their thrills from bringing others down. These people should be ignored at all costs, as hard as I know it can be.
Feeding into other people’s negative energy is the quickest way to spiral into insecurities you didn’t even know you had, stopping you in your tracks before you’ve had a chance to begin. The sad truth is we will never be accepted by everyone we meet, and the world may never truly accept the beauty in our natural aesthetic the way we would hope. We can’t let this stop us from being able to love ourselves. What people think about us is none of our business. Later, we will dive into how to manage this dynamic when it’s closer to home, in our family circles and love lives, for instance. For now, let’s look at that other 90 per cent.
It’s the thoughts and opinions of our colleagues, friends, and even strangers we pass on our daily travels that can often have the most impact. Because of our fears and insecurities, it’s easy to let our anxiety about wearing our natural hair create a cycle of negativity.
Here are some of the ways this cycle can manifest itself in us psychologically.
The cycle of insecurity
Negative self-talk
It starts with critical inner thoughts about your hair. This negative self-talk often leads you to compare your hair to others more frequently, dismiss your natural texture as less attractive, and assume that others around you are thinking these negative thoughts, too.
Catastrophising
These negative thoughts lead to imagining worst-case scenarios. You might picture people staring, judging or making negative comments, which can leave you feeling distressed or upset. In more severe cases, this fear may even trigger a panic attack as you worry about these scenarios becoming reality.
Confirmation bias
Anxiety makes you hyper-aware of any potential negative re- actions. A harmless glance or conversation between strangers in the distance can easily become a confirmation of your fears and insecurities about your Afro.
Avoidance
To avoid the perceived negativity, you might choose to wear your hair in a way that hides your curls or avoid leaving the house until you’ve found a way to disguise it. This avoidance can even lead to cancelling plans because you can’t find a way to successfully conceal your Afro – something I’ve done on several occasions when a hair appointment was cancelled or rescheduled.
Letting this cycle of anxiety continue can impact the health of your hair, as well as your mental and physical well-being. Negative feedback loops such as these can feed into lower self-esteem and confidence, depression and social isolation, due to avoidance behaviour and increased overall stress and anxiety levels.
The other big issue, which we’ll explore in more detail in Part Two, is the impact those stress hormones can have on your natural hair. Hair goes through different phases: growth (anagen), transition (catagen), and resting (telogen). Stress hormones like cortisol can push hair follicles prematurely into the resting phase, shortening the growth phase and leading to increased shedding.
The spotlight affect
The Spotlight Effect is a well-documented cognitive bias where people overestimate how much others notice their mistakes, flaws or peculiarities. It’s like believing you’re constantly under a spotlight, with everyone fixated on your every move. This bias was explored by social psychologists Gilovich and Ross in 2000 and suggests that we tend to overestimate how much others notice our flaws or mistakes.2
I know this bias well. When I stopped wearing wigs and tried wearing just my Afro for the first time, it triggered intense bouts of anxiety and often became the main cause of my most memorable private meltdowns.
I’d be walking down the street, and because of my insecurities about my natural hair, I’d imagine entire conversations between strangers nearby. I’d assume they were looking at me, picking apart my appearance and debating all the styles I could have chosen that would look ten times better than the Afro I was wearing in that moment. These false assumptions would make me feel so apprehensive and fearful of wearing my natural hair without covering it with a wig or flattening it with gel that, on a few occasions – mainly when I walked past large groups of people – I felt physically nauseous, imagining all the nasty jokes and hurtful comments I assumed were being made at my Afro’s expense. It wasn’t until I recalled an old college psychology lesson about something called the Spotlight Effect that I was able to release myself from the constant angst I felt about returning to my natural texture.
Why the Spotlight Effect happens
Egocentric bias
Egocentric bias is the root cause of the Spotlight Effect. We tend to see the world from our own perspective and often assume others do the same. While we have full access to our thoughts and feelings, we have only limited access into the minds of others. This can lead us to believe everyone is as focused on our actions as we are.
Salience of our experiences
Our own experiences are naturally more vivid and memorable to us than those of others. If you give a presentation and stumble over your words, that moment will likely feel very prominent in your mind. However, from the audience’s perspective, it might be a minor blip quickly forgotten.
There are so many times when I’ve looked at someone and for all of three to five seconds, taken them, their hair, maybe their outfit into consideration, and then returned immediately to whatever it was that was consuming my thoughts at that moment. Unless prompted, I’d literally never have thought about those three seconds again. And that’s coming from quite an observant person. Reminding myself of how I react to people helped me remember how many people are likely also reacting to me.
One of the main reasons the Spotlight Effect can be particularly troublesome for members of the Afro-haired community is that many of us also face real prejudice, racism, and micro- and macro-aggressions that feed into our biases and frame how we believe we are likely to be perceived by the wider population. We live in a world where, in 2023, one of the most well-established hotels in the UK was still brazenly banning Afro-haired staff members from working in their facilities, children with Afro hair were being turned away from school due to their natural hair going against ‘school policy’, and social media campaigns were going viral, all in the hope of stopping strangers putting their hands into our hair and touching our scalps without our consent. With this context, it’s easy to understand how our fears of being judged could intensify the perceived scrutiny of others. The key takeaway is that people are often more focused on their own self-image than scrutinising every detail of our appearance, including our hair. Put the views of others out of your mind and focus on working through how you feel about yourself. You can only control the controllables, which is how you feel, and what you choose to do about those feelings. Let go of any anxiety attached to everything outside your control, so you can preserve your health, protect your peace and start building your confidence from the inside out.
How to break the cycle
Challenge negative self-talk
When you find yourself thinking negatively, recognise and refute those critical thoughts. Pause and ask: Would I say these things to a friend or a loved one on the same journey as me? If the answer is no, start replacing those critical thoughts with affirmations about your beautiful, natural hair. For example, you could say:
— ‘My natural hair is a reflection of my unique beauty.'
— ‘Every kink, curl, and coil of my Afro is stunning and uniquely mine.'
— ‘My Afro is a part of who I am, just like the colour of my eyes and the pigment of my skin.’
— ‘I embrace my Afro with pride because it represents my identity and heritage.’
Repeat these affirmations as frequently as possible. If affirmations are not your thing, keep wearing your Afro, anyway. As difficult as those negative thoughts might be to silence, actively fight- ing back by turning up with your Afro each day, and normalising the experience, despite this internal dialogue, can be one of the most powerful ways to quieten that voice inside your head.
Cognitive reframing
Instead of imagining disaster, reframe the reactions you picture receiving, shifting them from negative to positive. While people are likely preoccupied with themselves and not judging your hair at all, the flipside is that if they are noticing your Afro, it might well be in admiration. The reality is you have no idea what someone is thinking.
Exposure therapy
This was one of the harder tasks for me, but it had the greatest impact on my mindset. Exposure therapy involves leaving the house wearing nothing but your Afro, no matter how uncomfortable you are, and gradually building up your confidence this way. Start small. Wear your natural hair for short outings, or with supportive people. Bonus points for days out with other naturals! Gradually build confidence in everyday situations and normalise the feeling. I’d do this daily, going out with a little less make-up and staying out for a little bit longer every time, un- til eventually, I was completely bare-faced and jewellery-free, wandering around for hours wearing my Afro without a second thought.
Try a natural look
When I first started wearing my Afro out, I’d always wear heavy make-up and bulky jewellery to make me feel pretty and less bare. I realised I was using make-up as armour – to counter my insecurities and distract the outside world from noticing how uncomfortable I felt – rather than enjoying make-up as a way to accentuate my beauty, as I once did. It was only when I stepped away from heavy contouring and false eyelashes that I was able to truly come to terms with my own reflection and genuinely like the look of the woman looking back at me. If you feel like you might be using make-up as a crutch, as I once did, try going without it for a while or wearing it in a more natural style. Allow yourself to really see the beauty of your face and hair as they are and get comfortable with that aesthetic.
Celebrate small wins
Acknowledge your progress, no matter how small. Each time you wear your natural hair is a victory and a step in the right direction. You deserve to celebrate that. Not everyone is going to understand how big these milestones really are, and the truth is they don’t need to. Remember, the validation of others isn’t go- ing to get us where we want to be on our journeys. This is about you and how you feel about yourself, so every time you fall in love with yourself a little bit more, get excited – it’s a big deal.
Take time to look at yourself
Take every opportunity you can to look at yourself in the mirror. Don’t rush this step because you feel silly or uncomfortable with the face looking back – that’s the whole point. Take a good few minutes doing this as frequently as possible. Looking at myself in pretty much every reflective surface I could find throughout the day wasn’t for vanity’s sake – it was to help normalise my reflection faster. At first, I felt awkward doing this, and very nearly stopped after day two. I didn’t like my reflection, so constantly chasing after a glimpse of it in every mirror I could find felt ridiculous. But as I persevered and kept at this particular task, I recall this one incredible moment – maybe two weeks into my daily mirror gazing – when I was looking in my bathroom mirror and suddenly, quite randomly, whatever discomfort I’d had fell away in an instant.
I remember the moment well because I was so taken aback by the switch in my self-perception. I looked at my face with my teeny-weeny Afro and, for the first time, thought I looked pretty. It was as if someone had lifted something dark from my eyes and now I could see clearly. I started moving my body in differ- ent ways to see how my Afro and I looked from different angles: head up, back straight, side profile, raised brow, pouted lip. The poses I used to do without a second thought when I was feeling confident and beautiful in my wigs were all of a sudden creep- ing back in, as though I was checking to see if that confident version of myself still fit without them. I started noticing things I’d never really picked out before because until I tried this task, I’d never spent enough time looking at myself to see them. I noticed how my Afro coiled around my face, softening my facial features, and how my cheekbones were more exposed from not having long, straight or braided hair suffocating my face and neck, hiding them away. Although this feeling of self-love took months to develop, some days I felt cuter than others. Still, I never lost the root of that feeling and have never disliked how I look with my Afro since.
If you’re not used to wearing your hair naturally, then that reflection of yourself can feel like looking at a stranger. Familiarise yourself with how you look with your Afro so you can turn that stranger into someone you know, love and look forward to seeing every day.
Seek support
Consider talking to a therapist who can offer positive reinforce- ments and help you challenge your negative thinking. Investing in a mental health professional could go a long way towards helping you work through any negative perceptions you may have of yourself in a supportive environment with someone who understands how to navigate the most difficult topics safely.
I spoke to Kemi Omijeh, a registered Member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (MBACP), Black psychotherapist, advocate, lover and wearer of natural Afro hair about how to be intentional about our relationship with beauty.
Kemi explained we should explore how we perceive our beau- ty and question who or what influenced this. Think about the mes- sages you receive and internalise about your beauty – beyond aesthetics. Who do you find beautiful and why? You can’t go wrong if you start from the inside and work on embracing your authentic self. Authenticity is key to celebrating your beauty.
I spent years trying incredibly hard to be perfect, beautiful and glamorous by the standards of others, and by the end of that chapter of my life, I was drained, emotionally exhausted and completely bald. The joy and confidence I feel today wearing my natural hair stems from the realisation that true beauty and perfection come from being my most authentic self. My advice to you is to be intentional about reframing your own perceptions of what your most beautiful state is. The more you align your understanding of perfection and beauty to authenticity and comfort, the easier this journey will feel, and the happier you’ll be as you explore it.
Extract taken from How to Love Your Afro by Paige Lewin, published by Bloomsbury Tonic, £12.99
