00:00What is magic about black girl hair?
00:03Black girl hair is magic because it can do literally everything.
00:09I mean, seriously, our hair is like shapeshifters.
00:13We have the most resilient hair ever.
00:15My hairdresser used to come to my house every two weeks and press my hair out.
00:20And one day I said to my mom, I don't want to do this anymore.
00:23My mother would keep us home until she can get our hair done.
00:27We were poor and to be poor and black and visibly poor and black is taboo.
00:35For her, if her black girls didn't have that sort of ideal beauty standard, then it would reflect badly on
00:41her.
00:41And I think she felt guilty and she felt bad.
00:44And so I remember her putting money away just so we can have our hair done.
00:49And I just remember feeling like there has to be more than my hair.
00:52I started reading Bell Hooks. I started reading Audre Lorde.
00:58I started looking up other images of black women.
01:01And I was like, I think I can pull this off.
01:04I went to a barbershop and I told them to shave it all off.
01:08I want to go bald. And I went bald.
01:10And that was that was amazing.
01:13It was scary. It was definitely like scary.
01:15Like, why did I just do this?
01:17And it was also the most exciting feeling ever because it was the first time in my life that I
01:23didn't feel like my hair was a thing that I was leading with.
01:27It was so many other things.
01:29And it changed me.
