My daughter Ruby was proud of her hair. Growing up as a mixed-race girl, she loved her natural texture, but that wasn’t always a straightforward journey. As a teenager, after years of using heat to make her hair straighter – and smaller – she embraced wearing her afro as an expression of who she was. That fragile self-acceptance was shattered when her hair started being policed at school.
“Your hair’s getting too big, you’re going to have to do something about that,” one teacher told her of her natural afro, the hair she was born with. “Why don’t you try chemical relaxer?” they asked my child, suggesting she use potent and damaging chemicals to strip her hair of its natural texture. Ruby was confused, hurt and humiliated. In a classroom of teenagers with dyed and shaved styles, it was her hair that was deemed so inappropriate that she was suspended from school: “I don’t care if it’s bright blue, just make it smaller,” one teacher told her of the size of her natural afro. The school claimed Ruby’s hair was in breach of their appearance policies, which stated that “afro style hair must be of reasonable size and length”. But on the day she was first sent home, Ruby’s hair was too short to be tied back, leaving her with no choice but to braid it or use chemical relaxer on her hair in order to conform to the policy.
