The time my mom put my pigtails in too tight. That is to say, the scalp sensitivity referenced below may be of a genetic nature.

There are some things you can only learn by living them.

Black Hair is something I am beginning to understand. I first had a glimmer of understanding in college, watching a comedy where Caucasian  girls were disparaged for flipping their hair around. As a Caucasian girl, when I did have hair, I always liked the way it flopped around, especially when I was running and had it in a ponytail. But it also always bothered me when other girls with my hair type were really obvious about their personal grooming or touching and flipping their hair around in public. In the movie, it was portrayed as something annoying because it is something Black hair just doesn’t do.

This year, my middle daughter is in her third year of competition dance. For each of her three classes, she has a different costume, makeup, tights, shoes, and a hairstyle. For ballet, that usually means a bun, and after I finally looked up how to do it on YouTube, I’ve had good results. It’s super satisfying to take a couple of my oldest son’s worn out (and laundered) black socks, cut the toes off, and roll them into a fat donut that makes my daughter’s bun look thick and round.

My youngest daughter cut her own hair a few months ago, which resulted in my having to cut off an incredibly beautiful Afro to give her an Orphan Annie cut until her hair grew back in evenly. My oldest daughter and I have been negotiating ever shorter hairstyles because she has a very sensitive everything and combing her hair out is typically characterized by screaming, begging, and crying, and that’s just what I do while I’m detangling her once every three months. We won’t talk about her behavior. And every three months? About how often she lets me close enough to her head to do anything about her hair.

We knew about the choreo in my middle daughter’s routine. It called for a hair flip, and  we’d need some kind of hair piece so that she could flip her hair with the rest of the girls in her class, all of whom have long, straight hair. My middle girl has never cut her hair, except for once or twice when I’ve trimmed damaged ends. Despite this, because she has super fine hair and a very tight curl pattern, when her hair is washed and dried, it barely comes down below her chin. Even with her hair pulled tight into a pony combed out in an Afro, there will be some bouncing or floating, but no flipping.

We gathered at the computer together to look at Amazon’s hair piece selection. I tried search term after search term. Variations of “curly hair ponytail extension” always pulled up reams of Caucasian hair pieces with loose, floppy curls that didn’t match my girl’s hair color or texture. Finally, afraid of what would come up because of the word’s other meaning, I used the word “kinky,” and finally got what we were looking for.

But as we kept scrolling through the options, I could sense my daughter getting more and more frustrated. Even the kinky hair options were often the wrong color or texture. All of this just so she could flip her hair during a two minute song didn’t really feel worth it.

We stopped for a minute. “I can tell you’re getting frustrated,” I told her. “What do you really want? Should we keep looking? What is the most important thing a hair piece needs to have for you to like it?” She sighed. “I want it to look my hair!”

Finally, we found something. Then we got to dance the day after ordering it, and I found out it was supposed to be a straight ponytail. My Momma Bear hair stood straight up when I saw that. I spoke to someone at the studio, and they were very gracious – my girl can keep her tightly curled extension. Now we just have to make sure to attach it to her head firmly enough to survive a hair flip (it employs an elastic drawstring  and a couple of little combs, and held up in dress rehearsal).

Everyone involved in the decision-making process for the dance class’s hairstyle for their performance has long, straight hair like the rest of her classmates. I don’t think the decision for the style was racist, it just completely took for granted that not everyone’s hair does the same thing. And unfortunately, it left my kid the odd one out.

I wish we didn’t have to have that conversation at all. I want to live in a world where we don’t just talk about celebrating our differences – that all of us have the awareness that some of our distinctions are significant ones which require different expectations.

Since I wrote this, Three has had four competition performances with her hair piece. It has stayed attached, hasn’t gotten frizzy, and she LOVES it. She enjoys conspiratorially telling friends that it’s fake.  She loves sporting a different look. Her teachers and the other kids in the class think it’s great. And if she didn’t confess, no one would know it wasn’t her real hair.