Good hair vs. Bad Hair. Light skinned vs. Dark skinned. You’ve heard the debate a million times before. So if we’ve heard it before, why am I bringing it up again? Well, I come from Suriname, a beautiful country in South America. If you have never heard of Suriname, Google a map of South America and look right above Brazil. Voila! You’ve found my beloved home! A beautiful country with sunny tropical weather and gorgeous people living in it. Okay, okay, I might be a little biased, but trust me, it’s beautiful.
Surinamese people come in all shades and different races and we pride ourselves on being able to live in harmony. Our different backgrounds have been integrated into a rich, laid-back and accepting culture. But yet, when it comes to these issues, we are not that different.
The funny thing is that the history of Suriname and that of the U.S have many similarities. Both have at a certain point been colonized by both the Dutch and the British and have had hundreds of thousand slaves imported and abused. In both countries these slaves were taught that their features were ugly and would never be as beautiful as the Caucasian features their masters had.
So, just like in the US, after slavery, my country was left with the same destructive cloud of self-hatred and division.
I used to think that I never experienced this as a little girl. Brown skin never seemed that big of a deal, because almost everyone was brown or tan. If you were black or white or in between, you were beautiful. And that remained true as I was growing up. But I did notice there was a very well-defined beauty standard when it came to hair.
If you wanted to be beautiful or professional, your hair should be long and straight. Spicy short hairstyles were accepted if they were straight. Curly hair was beautiful if the curl was loose enough. But for me this mindset was not weird, because I too had long chemically straightened hair.
It was after I moved to the Netherlands a few years back to study, that I started to notice that people started to compliment my long relaxed hair and my lighter complexion. It was odd to me; because I had never felt light-skinned or even thought that that was of any importance in my life. I was so happy that these labels did not exist in my seemingly perfect country… Or at least I thought they didn’t.
After deciding to go natural, I often went back to Suriname on summer break. It was then that I realized that when it came to the bitter after taste of slavery and self-hatred, my country hadn’t been spared.
You shouldn’t go natural, because your hair is not as soft as a mixed girl’s hair.
Sure, the color of your skin did matter less than in the Western world. Yes, the society told you that every race, every shade, every person is beautiful and accepted as he/she is. But deep down there was still a small awkward part that sometimes brought division amongst us. And I noticed that when it came to hair… OH BOY, the message was loud and clear!
“What are you going to do with your hair?; How are you ever going to get a job and be presentable?; Are you only gonna wear an afro? You’re ruining your beautiful hair!; You shouldn’t go natural, because your hair is not as soft as a mixed girl’s hair.”
But as time went by and I learned how to take care of my hair, it flourished. I’m happy to say that the negative comments towards me quickly stopped. People around me are very supportive now that the see how beautiful my curls are. And even the negative comments that would still come don’t faze me anymore. The only comment that to this day still seems to puzzle me is this one:
“Of course you can take care of your hair. It’s not that kinky. You have Good hair. If you would’ve had hard hair (like mine), you would have had a problem.”
Translation: I have a problem. I can’t accept my natural hair, because it’s not what I consider soft enough or good enough.
Comments like these sadden me, because they reveal that people are so convinced that kinky (coily) natural hair can never be manageable or beautiful. That if you learn to take care of your hair and it thrives, you must be mixed and cannot be solely of African descent.
Thankfully, the new wave of natural hair acceptance has also spread to Suriname and every day women are making the decision to embrace themselves and their hair and it is accepted as beautiful. As might be the case in your country, things have gotten better. But we also have a long way to go.
My country is beautiful. It has a very accepting atmosphere. But not one place on this earth is perfect. We are not that different. In many countries we’ve been left with the same mess to clean up. And every day we are led to believe that something that we naturally poses is not good enough. The Color of our skin, our body shape and in this case, our hair.
I can’t lie, I often catch myself feeding into those lies and that’s understandable, since we’ve all heard these messages for so long. But as we learn to embrace ourselves and heal our minds, it’s good to face how much we still believe the lies we have been fed.
What negative views does your country or community have on natural hair? How much do you think you are affected by these views and how do you change that? Leave your comments below in the comment section.
See how other naturally curly women care for their hair in our Being Natural In A Foreign Country series.
This is great! I’m a South African woman who has just relocated to the Netherlands and I noticed that a lot of Surinamese ladies wear their hair out naturally! It made me feel like tossing my wig out immediately. I am still quite new at my fro journey but it is a great thing to see how this movement is really world wide! Unlearning the self hate and redefining our beauty standards! Love it