Ever since I was born,
I’ve been really hairy.
My feet are also big and don’t look nice.
All my life I’ve gotten comments from my family,
About how, poor me, was so hairy.
You’d think I had a disease.
It was like, “What will we do with that poor thing?”
body image, bullying, hair

But I remember the way the hairdresser looked at my hair when I took off the hijab in front of her.
She was surprised it was curly.
She would make fun of my hair to the other people in the salon.
I think she used to hurt me on purpose when she was straightening it.
body image, hair, bullying, beauty standards

I had thick hair as a child.
I hated how much it hurt when my mother washed, brushed, or braided it.
I could never wear it down like my sister, who had beautiful straight hair.
One time at the beach, when I was 15 years old, a tourist stopped and asked me,
“How do you make your hair curly like that?”
body image, hair, beauty standards, bullying

I started straightening my hair at the age of 12.
I’ve been straightening my hair on a daily basis ever since.
My goal was to get rid of my horrible curly hair.
My hair got completely damaged.
But I didn’t have any other choice.
body image, hair, beauty standards, bullying

“Why isn’t my hair pretty like yours?
Why isn’t it soft like my friends’ hair at school?
Why do I keep screaming whenever my mom fixes it for me?”
body image, hair, bullying, beauty standards

I am a curly-haired girl.
Everyone calls my hair scraggly.
Everyone insists that I should straighten it,
But I don’t want to.

My mother only likes straight hair.
She’d always straighten our hair, using various gels and keratin.
She wanted to straighten it in any way possible.
hair, bullying, beauty standards, body image

I stopped wearing the hijab a few months ago.
Ramadan is approaching and I’m terrified.
I’m afraid of what my family might say.
I’m afraid of what people in the street will say.
social stigma, hijab, hair, harassment, the street, social pressure

“Do you have good or bad hair?”
I get this question all the time from everyone around me.
But I’ve never mustered up the courage to reply.
So I tell them: “Yeah, my hair isn’t straight.”
Despite my family’s efforts to convince me that I had nice hair as a baby,
All of the kids at school were skilled in the art of bullying.
body image, hair, beauty standards, bullying

Back when I was in school, all the boys and girls would stare at my hair and call it a “brillo pad.”
I braided my hair most of the time so people wouldn’t notice I had coarse hair, and so I wouldn’t stand out.
body image, hair, beauty standards, bullying