Today, Jess D. Facts wrote a moving piece about her beautiful daughter being bullied because of her curly hair.  And while I'm glad that her little girl is thrilled with her new hairdo, wouldn't begrudge her the right to chemically straighten it, and as long as there isn't any abuse going on it's really none of my damn business how someone else raises her child, I can't help but feel a little uneasy about the whole thing.

It's not that she did something to make her daughter feel beautiful.  It's that even as we rightly denounce the bullies who pick on someone for their appearance, we're still so quick to agree with the bullies that there is one standard of beauty we should all aspire to.

Every day I see girls with the same hairstyle--stick straight, a little past the shoulders, parted on the side, sideswept bangs.  I know that this is the fashion nowadays and that fashions change.  But I also know that the genes for curly hair are dominant, meaning that a fair number of these girls do NOT have hair that naturally grows that way.  Getting that style requires chemicals, a flat iron, a blowdryer, or all three, and all three are terrible for your hair. 

I've got curly, unruly hair myself.  It's the only physical trait I inherited from my mother--all the rest is Dad.  I was lucky, though--I grew up in the 1980s, when curly hair was the fashion, the bigger and frizzier the better.  I know what it's like to ride in a convertible or go swimming in the ocean and then try to get a comb through a tangle the size of your fist.  Over the years, I've learned something--the less I fight its natural state, the happier both my hair and I are. 

On my mother's advice, I got it cut to about collar-length in 1999.  She said that it would make it more manageable.  This was a huge, huge mistake.  I turned into Gilda Radner.  Since then, I've been growing it out, getting an inch or so hacked off every couple of months to keep the split ends at bay.  It's now almost down to my waist and takes all of ten minutes every evening to wash and five minutes every morning to style.  Guys universally love it.  Hairdressers universally hate it because it gives them nothing to do. 

(And, in one creepy, creepy moment in the line at CVS, I was told by a Hitler-moustached total stranger in early 90s Garth Brooks-style American flag shirt that he liked my cross necklace.  When I said thank you, he cryptically replied, "You don't see those on girls with Jewish hair too often.") 

My advice to Jess's daughter:  Grow that hair out.  Let it curl.  Condition, condition, condition.  Don't mess with the perms or the blowdryer or the flatiron and for god's sakes don't comb it out dry or brush it at all--just comb it with a wide-tooth comb when it's wet and let it air-dry. 

And now, lest you think I'm making this up...

(April 2005.  Fairhope, Alabama.  I'm the curly-haired one.  It wasn't even humid that day.)

(September 2007.  York, England.  I'd bought a beauty magazine a couple of days before to read on the plane and it had an article about hairstyles for curly haired girls.  At eight o'clock that morning, I wet it down, combed it out straight, put extra-strength gel in it, and twisted it all back into a nice neat bun secured with about 12 bobby pins.  By ten o'clock, it was obvious that my hair held no store with Glamour magazine.)

(April 2010.  New Orleans, Louisiana.  At a Hemingway-themed costume party with my friends from grad school.  I'm one of Hemingway's polydactyl cats.  Got about an inch chopped off a couple days later, but I'm still growing it out.)