HAIR

The trait that I would argue segregates people most next to skin tone. Hair in my country is what defines a woman, in the Dominican Republic everyone has big hips, but not everyone has "beautiful" hair. I have been going to the salon since what I believe to be out of the womb, once a week for two hours, I let someone terrorize my scalp. I am 18 years old, and I have gone since I was 10, that is 8 years, 2 hours a week, 52 weeks out of the year, which means I have spent 832 hours of my life in a salon. Count in how much it costs, $25 a visit, so 10,400 so far, on my hair. I would like to say that this was a forced activity on the part of my mother, who did not want to walk around with a child with a birds nest on her head, but at some point, I was the one asking to go to the salon. This is where the hair fascination comes in, I always wondered why I did not have wavy hair like my Puerto Rican friend Gabriella. My mother's answer was always the same, "No se Henesis, tienes el pelo de tu padre" or "I don't know Genesis, you have your father's hair" but I'll say this knowing my mother will not see it, we have the same hair. 

Why exactly do I not want curly hair? Well I cannot comb it to save my life, it varies between frizzy and knots, much like my weight, and I have this irrational fear that guys do not find me attractive because of it. I grew up thinking that good hair was bouncy, straight, and unaware of split ends, so what Dominicans calls "gringa" hair, or white people hair. So imagine my surprise when I saw this Caucasian female with curly hair, first reaction was "HEY THAT'S MY HAIR TYPE NO FAIR" second reaction "WHAT CONDITIONER DO YOU USE" my hairdresser, who I have on speed dial, would have fainted knowing I asked a white girl for hair advice. She yelled at me as if I was her own child when I used garnier fructis once, but that relationship is normal to me. The point is, why do we look at someone and expect a certain type of hair? Why do we then judge them based on their hair? If I saw someone with bright blue hair, I probably would think they are less responsible than someone with normal brown hair, this is coming from someone with purple tips. Why is it that hair is a tool for judgment, an indicator of race, indicative of someone’s professionalism? In the photos I took I aim to explore to hair, and how sometimes the hair does not match the person or the expectations we have for their hair.