The Compleat And Actual Adventures of Marcella White Campbell

I’m the girl with the hair.

I’ve always been the girl with the hair. It’s always out of the ordinary: thick, puffy, definitely nappy, and, strangely enough, really long. My hair is my calling card, my icebreaker, whether it is cornrowed, natural, wet, pulled back in a bun, relaxed, or pressed within an inch of its life.

I have always wished for some better, imaginary kind of hair. It would be long, and never tangle; straight, but with plenty of body; wash effortlessly and air-dry beautifully.

In other words, I wanted Unicorn Hair.

Instead, I had my hair, which literally took all day to wash and blow-dry in the years my mother and grandmother refused to have it relaxed. (I remember lying on my back in the bathtub at my grandparents’ house, staring up at the mottled ceiling, just waiting for my hair to get wet.)

I was only allowed to wear my hair down on extra-special occasions, and was always shocked to discover that it didn’t fall down my back like Unicorn Hair, billowing in the wind. Instead, it grew into a giant hair cloud.

My hair has had more phases than Madonna. The twists, braids, and baubles years, sitting on a blue vinyl ottoman while my grandmother combed through my hair with a marbled Goody comb and watched The Guiding Light. (The comb was also useful for popping my fingers when I covered my head to stop her from combing out a particularly horrific snarl).

Those years went on far longer than I wanted them to, until, when I was in eighth grade, my mother finally brought home a box — well, two boxes; I have a lot of hair — of Optimum Care, a chemical relaxer that sounds like an Autobot boy band. I almost immediately tired of doing my hair and basically wore it in a bun at the nape of my neck for five years, with occasional time off to wear it “down.” It was still not Unicorn Hair — not even a wind machine could move it.

In college I embraced the fact that I could wet it in the shower and wear it in something like wavy tendrils. When it was wet, it was very pretty. As it dried, it grew like a Chia Pet, until it added about six inches to my height. Once, I met President Clinton in a receiving line, and he said “I like your hair.” (I am not being sarcastic! I swear this happened. There are witnesses.) After that, I stuck with the big hair thing for a good while. If it was good enough for the leader of the free world, it was good enough for me.

(I am still ashamed to relate that future Secretary of State Hillary Clinton extended her hand to me in that receiving line, and I pulled away my hand to try to shake her husband’s. She rolled her eyes at me, and I absolutely deserved it.)

For my wedding, a hairstylist wrestled with my almost completely virgin hair for five hours before releasing me with my first real press n’ curl. It was so flat that it wouldn’t even hold a hair clip. Flat became the new puffy, and I avoided rain and religiously wrapped my hair in a scarf every night. My husband even relaxed my hair once, he is very good at it and should probably be doing Black hair care as a sideline. (I would like to return home after a day’s work to find my husband sitting on the couch cornrowing people’s hair.)

I toyed briefly with natural hair when I was pregnant with my youngest, but I found myself in a salon before my son was six weeks old.

Fast forward to this summer. In July, I paid someone $140 to spread chemicals on my hair to change its structure. Then I came home and deep-conditioned my daughter’s beautiful hair and let it dry naturally into tight curls. I’ve spent my daughter’s entire life teaching her how beautiful her hair is, how it’s not hard to care for, how it doesn’t have to look like mythical beast hair. She and I have defined her own standard of beauty, found the hair care products that work the best, and stick to them. She loves her hair, never asks to change with someone else.

And yet I hate my own hair.

I hate that I define myself according to how my hair looks. I don’t feel dressed up unless my hair is straight. I looked in the mirror the other day and seriously considered updating my Facebook status to “Marcella White Campbell looks like a homeless cashmere goat.” I teach my daughter that her hair is fine just the way it is, and then do everything in my power to change mine.

I was saving up to go back and pay $140 when it hit me that it was going to have to stop. I can’t keep telling my daughter to do as I say, not as I do. She knows, intuitively, that I don’t like my hair. I’m going to have to learn to like it. If I start by doing it for her sake, maybe I’ll end by doing it for my own.

This is my hair, air-dried naturally.

It’s mostly relaxed, still, but I’m going to grow it out. (I’m too chicken to chop it off yet. We’ll see.)

Maybe my hair wouldn’t be so “hard” if I stopped trying to apply unreasonable standards to it, if I developed my own standard for hair beauty. My hair can be healthy and clean, but it is not going to be shiny. In its natural state, it is never going to bounce or flip in the wind. I am never going to have Unicorn Hair. I’m going to have to learn not to care.

(Thanks a lot, Chris Rock. No, seriously, thank you. And I promise I am going to go see your movie.)