roots

Back in high school, I got tired of having straight hair and cultivated a close relationship with my curling iron. It was a beautiful arrangement that granted me the perfectly straight bangs and bouncy curls that were all the rage at the time. So taken was I with my styling tool that I consulted with it almost every other day. I never noticed any decline in my hair's health; having blown it dry after every wash for as long as I could remember, my hair was always on the crispy side.

But then while I was bored in English class one fateful day, I began toying with my hair and inspecting my ends. To my horror, I discovered a mutated split end, the monster of all split ends. The unfortunate strand bore an uncanny resemblance to a feather. Such is the result of copious amounts of heat abuse! After carefully plucking it out by the root, I almost wanted to keep it as my prized abomination. But that seemed kind of gross so I just threw it away.

I stopped curling it so much after that, but I couldn't give up my blowdryer. It didn't seem as villainous and having stick-straight hair with the blowdryer was better than having wavy hair with air-drying (my perfectionism would not allow such a compromise). But a few years ago, I seemed to be shedding a lot every time I washed my hair so I began to covet volume. And because life is ironic, the air-drying method that I so vehemently resisted in my younger days gave me my solution. My hair dries with waves in it this way, which somehow works to give me the illusion of more hair. My vanity and I approve.

I can't brush it or else it'd be pointless, but this falls perfectly in line with my laziness.

Enter my mom. I'm minding my own business, tossing my hair around to hasten the drying process and she tells me to brush it because it's not straight. I tell her that achieving waviness is the whole point. Then she abruptly changes the subject, asking if I dyed my hair, to which I paused in disbelief before saying I dyed it practically a year ago. "Your ends are all brown," she said, in the manner of a halfhearted protest.

"I think it looks nicer that way." Gives my mane some dimension, if you ask me.

She appears to harbor an unfounded fear that I'm going to forget my roots or deny my ethnic identity because I'm supposedly rejecting straight black hair. Silly mother. Is there only one accepted form of beauty? I guess there is for her. Based on the information I've gathered, I can only conclude that she wants me to go goth.