In 2025, we’re freeing ourselves from restrictions and inhibitions, which includes how we police our natural hair.
The natural hair space is one of reclamation, self discovery, and love. Many Black people come to this path as we venture to break from the Eurocentric beauty standards we have been taught. This space can help to redefine and return to personal notions of beauty that usher in self acceptance and oftentimes, a newfound sense of creativity and expression. There are countless reasons why “going natural” can have a positive impact on one’s life and outlook, yet, it can also introduce newfound pressures of styling, routine, and hair care that can be overwhelming.
Like all things, the natural hair lifestyle can succumb to the vacuum of limiting beliefs, arbitrary parameters, and new standards of success. As natural hair creator Solar Being once said to me in conversation, the natural hair community has a lot of “rules.” The idea that there is such a thing as a right way to be natural, or a “good natural” feels counterproductive for a movement that sought to break from rigid confines of performance.
Natural hair purists, if you will, deem it a cardinal sin to ever straighten your natural hair, as it “defeats” the purpose of going natural. Some venture to extend this notion to heat styling whatsoever, which can include diffusing, a proven useful method for curly-hair styling. Non-purists may abstain from doing heat styling, not based on morality, but to avoid risk of damage. The anxiety behind preventing hair damage at all costs can resort to restrictive experiences that are neither beneficial, freeing, nor realistic. Regardless of the reasoning behind how one chooses to style and care for their hair, it should be a personal decision based on what feels right for them, and above all feel liberatory not restrictive.
What is essential to remember is that a fundamental purpose behind the natural hair movement is rooted in the idea of body autonomy, self expression, and confidence. For generations, Black hair has been subjugated, limited, and stripped of choice. Policing how one chooses to wear their natural hair, how good of a “natural” they are, or anything in between, diminishes what the movement set out to do.
If a natural wants to only style their hair in twist-outs because it is the style they feel most beautiful in, the last thing they need is to be bogged down by comments of “tension damage.” If a texture-haired natural’s go-to style is a wash n go, it does not immediately mean they only accept their curls in a defined state. If someone wants to switch up their styles frequently, including an occasional silk press or weave, it does not mean they are a “fake natural” or that they hate their curls.
While all the aforementioned may be plausible, it is not within anyone’s right to then guilt, pressure, or shame anyone to conform to another’s definition of acceptable practices simply because it does not align. It could all simply mean that they are doing so because they want to, because they like it, and because they are not bothered by socially constructed rules. That alone is reason enough.
Along with the “right” or “wrongs” of natural hair care, there can also be self-imposed pressures for our hair to look a specific way. If no one has told you yet: sometimes it’s okay that your style didn’t come out perfectly. You aren’t a failure if your wash n go wasn’t all the way defined, that your twists turned out a little frizzy, or that your puffs aren’t perfectly shaped. The wonderful thing about natural hair is that it is so dynamic, it often has a mind of its own.
Yes, hair is an extension of ourselves; a powerful tool used to communicate with the world. For Black women particularly, hair is deeply political. All this can be true, as well as the fact that it can also be “just hair.” Not in the reductive sense, but in the sense that hair is one portion of your full self that you can lean on to experiment with, but it is not your entire self.
While “best practices” are labeled so for a reason, and most naturals set out to prioritize the health of their curls, we can allow ourselves to live a little and see what happens. The beauty in being natural is that we can always start again.
In 2025, here’s to more risk taking, less concern about performance, and turning those styling “oops” into “oh wells.”
