I remember feeling pain when I got my hair braided the day before kindergarten started for the first time. Five years old, tucked between my aunt’s knees as her deft hands yanked my head this way and that, sharply pulling me back and pushing me forward. Stop moving, she would say and I would take that personally because it wasn’t me moving on purpose. It was her directing my head around as if I was a marionette. Of all the traits my mother has passed on to me, being tender-headed is not one of them. Withstand the pain, gain the beauty—but even that is far too simple to explain the loyalty I give box braids. It’s been my go-to hairstyle since I was a child.
I have a love-hate relationship with my natural hair. It isn’t a matter of embracing its beauty and purpose and presence. I’m in constant awe of how it opposes gravity, the versatility of its shape, the infinite possibility of styles and design that it can create. I’m simply not strong enough. Taking care of natural hair is a full-time job. It demands patience and time, and consideration. Between the cycles of getting box braids, I allow my hair to breathe and grow without restraint. I wonder how much it has grown and the shrinkage after an extensive wash. The key here is to keep my hair moisturized, air dried, and stylized. My hair bunches up in little ringlets that curl towards my roots until it is all pressed as close to my scalp as it can be. If I don’t twist and wrap my hair in silk when I sleep, it’ll mold around my head like a stiff helmet. I love my natural hair, but that doesn’t mean I don’t hate it all the same.
It wasn’t until ninth grade that I decided to stop running the straightening chemicals through my hair. My perm didn’t fade away. It clung to my dead ends, silky and smooth and brushing my shoulders. New growth may have returned to its rightful place at my roots, but my perm didn’t fade away. To really commit to wearing my natural hair, I had to take the next big step: my big chop. Just the idea of cutting my hair felt so daunting at first, but I reminded myself of two important things. One, I wanted my hair to grow back healthier. Secondly, would the state of my natural hair really matter when I wear one protective style eighty percent of the time?
Coming from someone who always comes close to tears of frustration whenever my hair doesn’t cooperate with me—yes, it really did matter.
I found so much love in embracing my natural hair. That doesn’t change the fact that my natural hair journey will always be secondary to my preferred hair care routine. I love getting my hair done. No, actually, I love having my hair done. The five hours seated in discomfort and sore scalp that lasts for two days after the fact are the lows of every cycle. It is the moments after that return me to the same braider time and time again. For the longest time, the look was the same: medium braids, black in color, long, soaked in boiling water for a wavy finish. It wasn’t until college that I started experimenting with the color of my braids. Blonde in the back during the fall. All brown and ginger during the winter. Now the style that will never change. The weight of box braids on my head, curled and falling down the length of my back, is a comfort. It keeps me grounded in my mind and body, grounded on this earth. This isn’t a dramatic thing to think—not when I was just a little girl in her tiny braids and colorful beads, hearing words like unprofessional, unruly, and unkempt being used to describe the styles I held so much fondness for. It’s all unfashionable terms that society throws around to express how unacceptable it views Black hair, regardless of its medium.
Box braids can not be reduced to an aesthetic marker of our culture. It doesn’t matter how many non-Black people still think they have any right or claim to appropriate another facet of identity they do not understand or respect. It is not just hair. Box braids represent a fusion of artistry and tradition, from braided maps that led slaves to freedom to a physical connection to our past, present, and future. There is so much beauty in box braids, their history, and their power of self-expression.
I just really love box braids, if that wasn’t obvious enough.
Words by Bri Shufford.
Graphic by Fai McCurdy.