{"id":58629,"date":"2019-07-30T20:15:57","date_gmt":"2019-07-30T20:15:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=58629"},"modified":"2019-07-31T01:27:39","modified_gmt":"2019-07-31T01:27:39","slug":"how-i-learned-to-love-my-natural-hair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=58629","title":{"rendered":"How I Learned to Love My Natural Hair"},"content":{"rendered":"

How I Learned to Love My Natural Hair<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Walrus<\/a>
\n2019-07-30<\/p>\n

Chelene Knight<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>
\nThe Walrus<\/small><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve spent thousands of dollars trying to turn my hair into anything but what it is: black and curly<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

\u201cBeauty was not simply something to behold; it was something one could do.\u201d
\n\u2015 Toni Morrison<\/a>, The Bluest Eye<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

When I was fifteen years old, I remember going to one of the many hair salons inside what was then called the Metrotown Centre mall, located in Burnaby, British Columbia<\/a>. I wanted somebody to fix my amateur, home-dyed, white-blond hair. I\u2019ll never forget the way the stylist looked me up and down like she was assessing the situation, assessing the damage. She paused for a millisecond with her white hand on her hip before blurting out that they couldn\u2019t \u201cdo my kind of hair\u201d at this salon and that I might want to try something across the street. Before she even said which salon, I assumed she meant I should go to Abantu, a salon that specialized in braids, weaves, and fades\u2014or, as the stylist put it, \u201cthe Black salon.\u201d<\/p>\n

I froze. Shouldn\u2019t I be able to go to any salon I wanted? Why was she trying to make this choice for me? My reaction in that moment consisted of a blank stare, disappointment, and confusion. At first, I assumed she was reluctant to fix my homemade hair mistake because maybe it was unfixable. But that didn\u2019t make sense. Her words cut deep. When she said, \u201cMy kind of hair,\u201d it was the word kind<\/em> that punched me in the stomach. My thoughts raced. I never heard of someone turning away a customer\u2014a paying<\/em> customer\u2014for not having the right type of hair. I decided that I wasn\u2019t going to take no for an answer…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve spent thousands of dollars trying to turn my hair into anything but what it is: black and curly<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,395,19,8],"tags":[2138,22979,6544],"class_list":["post-58629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-autobiography","category-canada","category-media-archive","tag-british-columbia","tag-chelene-knight","tag-the-walrus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58629"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58629\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58633,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58629\/revisions\/58633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}