Gotta Twist Out To Twist In: A Conversation With Curry
I am a 23 old Black woman who has never done a twist out until one month ago. This is my coming of age story.
If you are of the caucasian persuasion (or simply unfamiliar with Black natural hair care) do not fret, I will explain. A twist out is essentially Black natural hair care 101 in which you detangle, cleanse, condition, deep condition, twist, set, dry, and style. While it seems like a lot of steps-let’s be honest it is a lot of steps-but what you get in result is well taken care of, deeply moisturized, and most importantly hair that makes you feel confident to face whatever your life or the universe has for you. But this is not a blog about how good a twist out is or the intricacies of every step of such process, this is my coming of age of loving my 4c/kinky/coily/natural hair and my sharing a conversation with a professional natural hair educator that enlightened me to the intersection of race and the hair industry.
I was honored to have Black creative and Master Hairstylist, Curry (she/they), on The Liberation Podcast, and I am forever grateful for the wisdom and empathy to which they answered my questions and their affinity in restoring love and education into their work as a hair stylist. Upon asking Curry what called them to venture into this work she said;
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Curry: Doing hair and becoming a hairstylist really became important to me 1) because so many Black folks, including myself had just had such consistently negative hair experiences..period.
(continued)
Curry: A lot of what I was finding in hair school was that at every turn I was told that Black hair isnt important. But on the flip side I was teaching my teachers about Black hair because it wasn’t in the curriculum.
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As Curry explains their observations and shares insights of different experiences, I was brought back to my own memories of growing up as an adopted child in a mostly white suburban/rural environment. In this time frame (~1998-2015) there were certain guidelines set in place in both pop culture and reinforced through societal habits:
- Black natural hair is unpresentable
- Braiding was considered ghetto
- Weaves / weave industry become a standard and encouraged hair style
- Black women were to present themselves in a very specific way that appeases both white euro-centric ideas of beauty and the western fetishization of Black female bodies
This combination of environment and overtly accepted culture resulted in me living the majority of my life disconnected and in a state complete devaluation of my own hair and body.
One of the major battles I faced in creating a healthy relationship with my hair was overcoming the embarrassment of simply not knowing anything. As Curry details in our conversation, the hair industry has an incredibly long history of systematically leaving out and at many times fully oppressing Black hair and Black hair expressions. Whether it be traditional braiding techniques, decorative head wear (especially during Jim Crowe era), or really any expression of Black beauty was deemed inappropriate and wrong. This was and in many ways still is a tool used to perpetuate a strong hold on Black folks by devaluating their bodies as well as their collective and individual expressions of self-love. Although the Black hair industry has taken many positive steps forward, and there are seemingly a much broader representation of Black hair expression, many of these hateful identity erasures and cultural ideas still exists in the hair industry and have been internalized by the Black community-myself included.
However, when I asked about her philosophy and frame of reference for her Black Beauty School , I realized the opportunity I had to start dismantling these internalized and perpetuated ideas that I have been holding onto for so long.
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Safara: What does it mean to integrate Black natural hair into these hair schools and institutions?
Curry: When we think about hair salons and barber shops in the Civil Rights times..they were not only places where you could go and get beautiful, but they were safe spaces. This was a place where they could go back, be restored to beauty or wholeness-they could kind of talk about this horrible treatment they were receiving and get information as to where the new march was or protest.
(continued)
Curry: If we think about hair salons, this is one of the last fields or careers left where you are physically touching people with their hands. There is an energy that comes when we are touching one another. So I think it’s important to restore that.
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In hearing Curry detail such rich history of Black hair salons, I was brought to my first “ah-ha” moment with my relationship to my hair and how it runs parallel with trauma healing. To quote Bessel van der Kolt in their book The Body Keeps the Score;
“As long as you keep secrets and suppress information, you are fundamentally at war with yourself…The critical issue is allowing yourself to know what you know. That takes an enormous amount of courage.”
It is wildly understood that when you begin a healing journey a major part of it is reconnecting with the traumatized body. Finding where your trauma is stored, exercising holistic ways in which to dispel that pent up energy and internalized fear, and then developing an ear on how to listen to your body and tend to its needs…but never in a million years would I consider part of this body work to be my hair.
When I began researching natural hair care techniques, I was met with a familiar anxiety-deep, embarrassing, and creul. I was taken back to every hair relaxing session with my mom (through no fault of her own)embarrassed that my hair wasn't straight like the girls on the box, infuriated by how crispy and dry my hair was after just a day, and petrified any time someone tried to reach and touch it or said something along the lines of, “look at this afro!” I was taken back to salon experiences where hairstylists would stare at me, openly complain to me about my hair, ask me questions that I quite literally made up answers to because I was mortified by the idea of saying, “I don’t know.” All of this rushing back at lightning speed. But just as quickly as this anxiety was resurfacing, my newly healed self was affirming my actions and telling me that I am doing the right thing.
After a solid week of researching all the steps, all the products, all the Instagram content, I finally took a trip to Sally’s and decided that my next wash day was the day.
- Tea tree cleanser-check
- Argan oil conditioner-check
- Deep conditioner-check
- Twisting cream, comb and gel-check, check, CHECK
It was on this Friday wash day session that I was forever changed. For the first time when my finger tips touched my scalp I was not afraid, I was not embarrassed, I was not ambivalent…I was liberated. I was touching my scalp and feeling my coils wrap around my fingers, grasping onto every morsel of nutrients and love my hands had to offer. For the first time I felt what it meant to love something that so many people told me to hate and for that love to only be for the sake of my own joy.
While I wish one twist out session could solve all of my trauma and identity issues I know that that is not and will never be the case. However, what this breakthrough in my hair care taught me is that through education and courage to come face-to-face with past negative or traumatic experiences, you can access new levels of healing that in result allow for new levels of joy and new levels of connectedness.
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To listen to Curry and I’s full conversation go to the theliberationpodcast.com or stream on any major streaming platform (Spotify, Apply Podcasts, Amazon, Stitcher, etc.)
If you’d like to continue to get updates about the podcast follow me on Instagram: @safara___
Support Curry by following their accounts: @bespokecurry & @beadsandcowrie
