As I sit here writing this, while watching my favourite show on Netflix, makes me wonder how much the world has changed. As a 80s kid, i grew up with little or no exposure to social media. So prior to the Instagram age, beauty was limited to what I saw around me: my classmates, cousins, the adults in my life and the actress or models on television that sported straighten or blowout hair, which was perceived perfection.
I am probably a second or third generation Singaporean as my ancestry originates from India. My grandparents or great grandparents would have come to Singapore to work during those days and settled here. So I grew up in a population where the majority sported straight hair, a certain beauty standard is set whether we like it or not.
I never really got picked on or bullied in school for my hair type. Any criticism about my hair, skin, and body type thrown upon me, I learned to deal with it there and then at an early age. As when I stood up for myself, I realised they stopped. And also they knew I would complain to my teacher, LOL.
The biggest challenge toward embracing naturally curly hair is, in my opinion, expense. For one, products that are made for natural waves, curls and coils are hard to come by in Singapore. It does take a little bit of spending to be able to ship bottles of product in from overseas. And there is also the overwhelming task of figuring out which products to try and which might work.
My advice is that do not immediately get products just because it worked for someone else. The first thing you should do is to find out your hair type. Then, understand the key concepts like why you need to
co-wash, deep condition and how styling techniques help with achieving your desired results.
Also, now with vastly available curly hair pages on Instagram and websites like apicurls.com and naturallycurly.com, find a curly haired blogger with a similar hair texture to yours. Then try out what they love using, and do what they do. See if that works for you as well.
Every curly girl has her own story. The more i speak to other curly girls these days, i realise that we have all been through similar experiences. There is roughly the "what to do with this hair, let’s go straight hair”, "Ok, fine, I don't care anymore", and hopefully, the "all right, I need to figure out and start embracing my curls" phase.
It is easy to feel beautiful now because curly hair is trending. It is all over Instagram and girls with straight hair now want to go for a perm. I am now told that my curls are beautiful, spirally, bouncy, voluminous. But this is not about Cinderella becoming beautiful overnight isn’t it?
"This is about loving yourself, your natural self that you were made to be.
Author:
Viji
Founder @Curlyheavensg
Co Founder @Maneheavensg