Photo: Onicia Muller- 2015 Wedding Mirror

My 27th birthday was on the horizon. I was a late bloomer and introvert who finally felt like life was falling into place. I had my Master’s degree, produced my first play, I could still fit into my jeans from high school, and in a few months, I would marry my OKCupid boo. Oh yeah, I was also having the best hair of my life!

By Erickka Sy Savané

As the managing editor of CurlyNikki I read a lot of comments, especially on the Facebook page where folks nowadays seem more comfortable, or maybe it's just more convenient, to sound off. This particular comment and question from a reader was tough to read, and I think anyone would agree, whether a parent or not: My daughter has 4c hair and the shrinkage is real! She gets teased at head start by her peers. They call her bald head and ugly because her hair isn’t long and silky. I try my best to instill in her love for her natural self. She doesn’t feel pretty unless she has crochets in. I was teased a lot in school, and it still has an affect on my self esteem. I’m afraid she’s going to end up the same way. How do we teach our kids to love themselves when we have other kids out here telling them they’re not good enough?

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Women have had their bodies policed since the beginning of time. As with many things in life, women of color, in particular, have felt the overwhelming pressures of this policing on everything from skin tone and hair texture to body shape. More and more researchers, professors, and thinkers are coming together in a quest to understand the complexities women of color face in terms of their self-image and how society affects self-confidence. While racial identity is a complex matter, and everyone has their own unique experiences, there are certain societal expectations on female beauty which are so ingrained in the media that they affect women of all ages in a myriad of ways.

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