Kiera Bradshaw is a senior and part-time hairstylist at the University of Missouri. She spoke about the mental health impacts of hair, texturism and hair depression in the Black community.
Texturismis the discrimination against people with kinkier, coarse hair in the 4B and 4C range, as well as a preference for looser and smoother textures in the 3A to 3C range.
Missouri Health Talks gathers Missourians’ stories of access to healthcare in their own words.
Kiera Bradshaw: I feel like we have this stigma where it's like if your hair isn't touched, or if it's just the way it is. Then it's just unkempt, it's ugly. And we have these feelings so deep ingrained into our hair, and I do think that's because of texturism.
Certain girls are able to just wake up and do a wash-and-go and just leave, and then they'll just be like, ‘Oh your hair is so pretty. Your hair is so cute.’ Whereas people with 4C or 4B hair, we have to always just do our edges or do silk presses and stuff like that. Or else, it's always going to be nappy or unkempt.
So, I do think we have these feelings attached to our hairstyles and stuff, especially since that's all we have. That was one of our only ways to express our creativity as African Americans.
When I was younger, I used to get depressed about my hair all the time just simply because I have 4C hair, and with 4C hair comes shrinkage, and, I had my shrinkage and everything, I would be called you know, bald-headed and stuff like that.
I did go through a really long time where I did not want to leave the house if my hair was not done, and I would get super depressed if I was feeling like I was ugly because my hair wasn't done, and that's one of the things where our feelings and everything is attached to our hair.
And I do feel like that's because of society.
So, I think that hair depression is a really big problem in the Black community because we weren't told that our hair was beautiful. We were always told that there was a problem with it, we should always do something to it to make it look as European as possible.
We can't even have special events without grandparents and stuff saying like, ‘Oh, you need to get a silk press, you need to put some curls in your hair.’ Like, when we used to go to church for Easter, always that hot comb. We have trauma from that hot comb, okay?
Laughter.
So, we have so much trauma from not being able to embrace our natural hair or natural hair textures that it's turned into us not being able to appreciate it or just us in general not being able to leave the house or be depressed just simply because our hair is not what we want it to be.
When in actuality, our hair is beautiful the way that it is. It doesn't need to be altered or anything. It could just be.
I do think that comes with loving your hair; you have to be appreciating your natural hair in its natural state and that takes a long time to do, it takes work to actually be able to love your hair, especially after we've been told that it's not the standard.
So, we've been trying to build that self-confidence. That's why I love the natural hair videos that I see on TikTok, and everything, especially the ones that's dedicated to more textured hair.
But I know for myself – I definitely do have an attachment to my mental health with my hair. If my hair doesn't look great, I don't want to go out sometimes, but I'm still learning to love my hair altogether. And I feel like that's what the Black community needs to do right now too.
