FABI

"Ok focus. Yes I'm back. How it actually started was my mother always brushed my hair out, so I didn't know what my curl pattern looked like. I always just assumed that I had frizzy hair. I have pretty thick hair and my mother was like I can't handle it.  I'm going to relax your hair. So I relaxed my hair until the age of 12. Around that age, I went to a hairdresser and of course the hairdresser said that ‘relaxer’ is bad for my hair. That’s when I thought OK I am going natural now."

"My hairdresser decided we were going to put ‘curly’ in my hair. This way I would have beautiful curls and I would look mixed race. I was kinda like, sure, I don’t know, I mean I was 12 and I never knew what my own curl pattern looked like. I thought OK, you’re a hairdresser, so you know what you’re doing." 

"Fast forward, I had ‘curly’ until the age of 17. Or was I 16? No, I think I was 16. How I found out that ‘curly’ was bad too, is because my hair started to become very light brown. As you can see, my natural hair is pretty much black. My hair started to become really light brown, it became thinner and my volume disappeared. At some point I was just really curious, what my own hair looked like. I know I was home one day and I started looking for baby pictures of myself, so that I could understand what my natural hair looked like. My mother always brushed it out, so I had no idea. Then I thought shoot, I am just going to try."    

"I let my natural hair grow out 3 months after I had done my last ‘curly’. I agreed with Christine that she would be the one who would do the big chop for me. In February 2018 I finally did it." 

"I felt really ugly. Oh my god. I really felt like a boy. I don't know... It just wasn't my style. With other people, I usually find short hairstyles really beautiful, but my head, I just didn't think it suited me because I have a round face. I felt that I always had to wear makeup to feel feminine. After my hair was long enough to braid, I just braided it or twisted it all the time. I really wanted to have a grip on my femininity. I just did braids and twists. In the end it was pretty healthy for my hair, because I didn’t do much with it . Especially with the bad weather in the Netherlands. I think it was the summer of 2018.  That was the summer I let my natural hair to be… and started to wear my little fro. Now we’re here and my hair has grown as you see."

Dear Curls is our IGTV series, where we interview women of colour about their experiences with their natural hair. Check out all the Dear Curls episodes on our IGTV @heycurls_com.