Tame the Mane: Curly hair has a stigma of unruliness, portrayed through the media, and education and representation is necessary to reverse this prejudice

Growing up, Mia Thermopolis — aka “Frizzball” — was an icon in my life. In “The Princess Diaries,” I loved her dorky personality, granny glasses and outcast-turned-princess arc. Most of all, I admired her huge, untamed brown curls — which looked exactly like mine until Paulo, the royal hairdresser, gave her a makeover, straightening her curls to make her “beautiful.” I didn’t even begin to question anything. 

That was necessary…right?

My brain made the connection: if Mia had to straighten her frizzy hair to be pretty, then so did I. It seemed like common sense at the time — I didn’t realize the scene’s permanent damage to my beauty standards. Entering my teenage years, I wondered if straight hair would be the final step of my “glow up.” My sister, who has the same hair as me, started straightening her hair. No one else in my family had curly hair to show me it was okay to let mine loose. This pulled me closer and closer to the straightening iron.

The only reason I didn’t burn my hair to a crisp with the iron’s heat was my family who’d say, “Ada Lillie, we love your curly hair so much!” Their voices, however, highly contradicted the movies and media that surrounded me every day.  

Disney and Nickelodeon showed me that curly hair means messy and unruly. Comedic relief and free-spirited characters, like Alfredo Linguine from Disney’s “Ratatouille” and even Pinky Pie from the TV show “My Little Pony,” who had wildly unruly hair compared to any of the other ponies, each made me question my own personality. Both of these characters paved a one-way path for curly haired characters — they have to be the oblivious, wacky side character.

I couldn’t help but wonder: Was I also supposed to be dumb or unkempt? Why can’t curly-haired characters be strong, organized leaders? If we stopped associating curly hair with goofy side characters and started educating people about the importance of curly hair, then I never would’ve spent years upon years trying to tame my mane. I would’ve embraced it with open arms and truly believed that curly hair could be beautiful. Maybe I wouldn’t have put my hair in a ponytail every day in middle school or maybe I wouldn’t have declined every genuine compliment I got about my curly hair.

Recently, I’ve been trying to embrace my curls and have developed a six-step curly hair care routine consisting of washing, conditioning, brushing, drying my hair in a T-shirt and finally air-drying.

It’s frustrating to go through my entire hair care routine only to have people stare and think I just rolled out of bed.

This stigma is present across cultures. As a black woman, sophomore Campbell Kangethe feels that the stereotypes around natural, curly hair add to racial prejudices she experiences. She used to be afraid of wearing her hair out, but now embraces it. People still make comments.

“I do my hair, this is just how it looks,” Kangethe said. “It’s frizzy, not straight. It’s very annoying when people come up to me [and they say] ‘Bad hair day?’”

What someone may think is a bad day for curly hair could be a great hair day for that person. Frizzy is natural. Frizzy is beautiful. Frizzy isn’t unkempt or rugged like TV tells you through movies and TV shows like Disney’s “Bad Hair Day” or “Sabrina the Teenage Witch.” This constant reminder through all sorts of media negatively surrounds the curly-haired community.

The first step to eliminating the curly hair stereotype is through education, especially for hair stylists. 

Beauty school curriculum often includes the textbooks “Milady” and “Pivot Point,” which are designed to prepare students for the hairdresser license exam, according to popsugar.com. Neither of these textbooks have a chapter or section dedicated to curly haired clients. The word “curly” is only mentioned in a chapter covering how to curl someone’s hair with a curling iron. 

Education on curly hair isn’t required for official hair stylists to work with curly hair. Unprofessional hair stylists’ pages on TikTok or Instagram with tips and tricks for curly hair have taught me more than any hairstylist I’ve talked to.

With education comes representation. Kids need to see more powerful curly-haired protagonists like Wonder Woman and Frodo Baggins — not the geeky side characters I grew up watching. They shouldn’t have to experience the stereotype that I experienced growing up.