“I used to always straighten my hair. I can’t believe that I was putting in so much time and effort to essentially ‘kill’ my hair. Because I straightened it for so long, I didn’t even know my hair’s natural state, so I couldn’t see how it could look beautiful. Looking back now, I can’t see myself ever going back – I love my natural hair. It takes up space, and I’m making this space my own.

Shaving my head was a bold move made at 2 am on a Monday morning – of course, I was slightly apprehensive. Will I look like an egg? Does my head have a weird shape? Will I regret it? The answer is no to all of these questions. I feel like this hairstyle suits me better than any other.

I identify as non-binary/ genderqueer/ gender fluid… whatever you want to call it. I loved my long hair but I felt uncomfortable being immediately classed as ‘feminine’. I feel more like myself when I adopt an androgynous aesthetic… and hair grows back!”

– Ari

“I grew my afro out for about a year and a half. One day, my school in Costa Rica did a hair donation for Cancer Research, where they were auctioning off people’s hair. Those that could donate their hair would, but I couldn’t donate mine. In my case, the person who bid the highest got to shave my hair off. I had two of my ex-girlfriends bidding against each other, and I ended up getting the second highest bid in the school.

In Ghana, a lot of people aspire to have straighter hair and loser curls, instead of kinky hair. I feel I had ‘privileged’ hair. I was never made to feel like I wanted to change my hair, especially as a guy. I know girls had a different experience. A lot of half-Ghanaian, half-Japanese girls want to have really straight hair, being heavily influenced by Anime culture, especially when everyone in Japan has extremely straight hair.

I didn’t grow up doing a lot of hair care stuff. My mom’s Japanese, she didn’t know what to do with my hair. My dad’s Ghanaian. So I never learned all that stuff. With dreadlocks, they’re gonna do what they’re gonna do. Let them be. Take care of them, but you can’t be too bothered about how you want them to look. I’ve started to get more into dreadlock philosophy and self-love. Appreciation for being yourself. I feel my dreads have made me feel more free, so they match my personality.”

– Pele

“I once had a weave… it didn’t go well. My scalp couldn’t breathe. I had it as a bob cut, so I looked like a ‘Karen’. I thought ‘Well I paid for it, I may as well wear it’, but I remember my mom coming after me with a pair of scissors going ‘We’re cutting it out, it’s terrible!’

My mother’s white, and she loves my hair when it’s fluffy. She used to puff it up and stick a bow in front of it. She thought it was amazing. I looked like a Bishon Frise. Everyone wanted to touch it, because they had never seen it before, since it was just the three of us in school. I’m used to being different and the only black person in a crowd.

I can make my curls more defined, it just takes so long and requires me twirling each curl around my finger. When I was younger my mom would do it for me, but it had to be done in the morning, because if I slept on it, it would flatten the curls. So I remember waking up at the crack of dawn to curl each strand on my head. People wake up that early to do their make-up for the day, I’d have to do it to not look like a pom-pom.

The last place I worked, this girl from Guadeloupe was like “Oh! now I have someone to speak to about hair!” and I was like “I don’t know anything about hair”. She thought because I was black that I should know everything there is to know about how to manage black hair. I was raised by a white woman.”

– Amelia