Why Are So Many People Secretly Curly? (Refresh)

Hi everyone, it's Priya. We're refreshing one of our most popular episodes called Why Are So Many People Secretly Curly? This is the episode you have messaged me about the most, and it directly relates to our last one. In our last episode, we investigated the origin of the word frizz and discovered that the first time the word frizzy was used in a negative context was by a British colonial writer.

These two episodes are very connected. And this is also what inspired me to quit my job reporting on tech to make we are spiraling and start my hair care line Myra. Myura launches in a couple of weeks. I'm working my butt off to get everything done. You can join our wait list at MayuraBeauty.com. That's M-A-Y-U-R-A-Bauty.com for early access to pre-orders.

All right, here's my favorite episode.

Hi, my name is Ranya, and I was secretly curly for almost 30 years. Hi, I'm Chrisha.

I'm 33 and I'm secretly curly.

I'm a mom in Westchester and I am secretly curly.

My name is Sarah. I'm from San Francisco and I'm secretly curly. I for years had my hair chemically straightened at my mom's encouragement when I entered the workforce. Uh I was encouraged to straighten it to keep it looking professional. And really, that's just not my hair. It's curly.

This is Priya Anand, and we are spiraling. In this show, we talk to people about curly hair to learn more about who they are and about our culture. From our personal identity to how the world sees us. Everywhere you go, there are secret curlies. You might not even realize that some people you know have actually had curly hair their whole lives.

People go through a lot of effort to hide it. Some women get chemical treatments at salons every few months, others use a flat iron or blow dryer every time they wash their hair. So that means at least once or twice a week. And maybe it's partly that people always want what they don't have. So curly-haired women flatten their hair while people with straight hair use curling irons.

But there's also something deeper at play here. It's not just that people want to try a new look. So many women feel compelled, like they have no choice but to straighten their hair to be seen as serious or professional or chic or insert most other positive adjectives here. Whether or not you like it, and trust me, I don't like it.

Many people believe that curly hair is unprofessional, and I'm putting air quotes around that. This is something I've spent my entire adult life thinking about. I haven't straightened my hair since my early 20s, and I was never a regular flat iron user in the first place. It was maybe a once or twice a year thing.

And I don't believe any of those negatives we just talked about. I do think curly hair is chic and cool and beautiful, but I have to be a realist and acknowledge that there are other people who don't feel that way. And so I want to understand why people believe curly hair is messy and unprofessional and how we can dismantle that thought.

I want you to hear directly from the secret curlies we spoke to about why they hide their curls.

Even culturally growing up Arab, it was just kind of an unspoken rule that you'd blow dry your hair before weddings or formal events. And even my mom, who has always celebrated and championed our natural beauty, would sometimes say, like, Oh Ronnie, you're not gonna blow dry your hair for the wedding.

And in my early jobs, if I wore my hair naturally, I'd get comments like, you know, you look tired or a rough night.

Even celebrities feel this way. Anna Kendrick, who was nominated for an Academy Award, and Emmy and Tony, went on call her daddy last year, and she said that she is, in her own words, I'm like a secret curly.

What? I'm like a secret, like like Carrie Russell and Felicity level curly. When I really started to be like, oh, I need to like start learning how to like blow out my hair and whatever, was when like pin straight hair was it. It was when like tiny butts and super straight hair was the height of female attractiveness.

She said she recently let her two best friends see her hair curly for the first time, and her therapist, and she's still on a journey. And then there's also Ariana Grande. Everyone knows that she has her signature high ponytail, and most people have forgotten actually that her hair is naturally curly too.

And you can't blame them. She hasn't worn it that way since she was a kid. This is what she said on the Zack Sang show four years ago.

My real hair, which is the humongous curly poof, is kind of. I don't know. I like I I say I I so few people get to see it, and it's cute, and it reminds me of me as a kid, and it reminds me of, you know, it's who I am, privately.

And it's not just Anna Kendrick and Ariana Grande. I had a feeling there are probably a lot more secret curlies out there who haven't talked about it yet. So I called someone who would know.

My name is Matthew Collins, and I am a celebrity hairstylist based in Los Angeles.

Do you know any celebrities who are secretly curly?

For sure. And I don't know if they've talked about it. A lot of times I just hear a side of caution when I say anything about a clientele on thing, because it's like secretism. I mean just confidence is I always want them to have it in me for any reason, but definitely a lot of people. And a lot of people do have that texture of hair naturally.

Remember when Ariana Grande said her curly hair reminds her of being a kid? I have a theory. Because so many women straighten their hair on repeat when they come of age and enter the workforce, people tend to associate curly hair with children. And that means that those who do keep their hair curly remind other people of being a kid too.

It creates a perception of youth. This probably sounds like an amazing thing because everyone wants a fountain of youth and the entire skincare industry preys on our insecurities around aging. Who doesn't want to look young? But as a woman, it can sometimes really work against you. I mean, we all want to be taken seriously, right?

This happens to me sometimes. People don't think I'm a kid, but I do often get mistaken for being much younger than I actually am. Krisha, who you heard from at the start of the show, explains why this can be a real problem.

One of the main reasons why I straighten my curls is to look older. While straightening my hair doesn't make me look mid-30s, it definitely lessens the amount of times that people mistake me for a teenager. I don't mind in my personal life, but it matters to me in the workplace. I'm a pediatric healthcare provider, and teens will often see me as a peer, and their parents often assume that I'm a new grad.

And I found a huge difference in the parents' perceptions of me when I wear my hair curly versus straight. The straight hair adds a few years. It improves my perceived credibility, and they question me less about my experience and knowledge.

And now we're back to the perception issue. We've circled around so many times now that curly hair is for some reason not professional or makes people look or feel messy, and nobody wants to feel messy. Krishna explains how that plays out for her.

Like healthcare, clinical care. I usually wear a mask and a face shield when I'm working throughout the day. So my hair is it's often rubbed or it's pulled out of place multiple times, and wearing it straight means I can just tie it, untie it, I can toss it to any side and do whatever I want without worrying about frizz.

Those are the reasons why I am secretly curly.

Okay, so I want to talk about frizz and the fear that so many curlies have here. I am not delusional. There are days when I too feel like my hair is just not working out for me, or I don't have the time to wash and style it, so it has to be a headband day or something, or I get back home and I'm like, oh, alright, there's like a bit of a halo going on here, whatever.

Here's my hot take though: the fear of frizz is overblown. I truly believe this is the kind of thing where someone looking in the mirror is always going to see imperfections that other people might not notice ever. And Hollywood, media, and even the hair care industry, they're all to blame for this. Matthew Collins, the celebrity stylist we heard from earlier, reinforced my belief here.

If you look at hair brands, you know, I worked for a hair care brand, I don't anymore, for many, many years. And every curly hair campaign was not on natural curly hair. And it was really a product, it would be a product that is for, and hey, it would be a girl that has naturally curly hair. However, it was curled in quarter-inch sections.

Oh my god, curly iron.

It was like a very generic consumer-friendly brand.

I know you don't want to, you really don't want to name names right now, right? But I don't. It's just such a scam. Matthew explained that it's actually pretty common to use a curling iron to create perfect ringlets for characters on TV and in movies, but for a reason I hadn't thought of before.

Even if their hair's curly, you have to then use a curling iron to make sure every curl is going in the same direction because sometimes they're filming the start of an episode one day and the continuation the next day, and you can't guarantee that the hair is going to look the same. So, like, I realize like a lot of the curly hair thing is a continuity issue.

It's hard to mimic and create it. Like, you know, as a curly haired person, no two days are the same. It could be completely different based on the amounts of product you put in, uh, the weather, what's happening. It's hard to do in movies because of continuity, but you're right, it's it's technically looked at as more disheveled.

So now we do need to answer this question, which is where did this idea come from that curly hair is disheveled, unprofessional, messy, pick your slur? I've been trying to figure out the answer to this for so long, and I finally found someone who can help me.

I'm uh Dr. Midge Wilson. I'm an emeritus professor from DePaul University, social psychologist by training, former director of women and gender studies, and my specialty was the effects of beauty on perceptions of people, either negative or positive, and a lot of cross-racial issues.

So, how extensively have you researched and studied curly hair and the impact of curly hair on one's life and society?

Because of the two books that I co-authored, The Color Complex, about skin color issues and the relationship of good hair versus bad hair to skin color and divided sisters relationships between white women and black women. There's a lot of tension around hair. So I certainly researched those topics in writing the books.

So, where did this idea come from that curly hair is messy or unprofessional? This is something that I've heard from countless women. Where did this idea come from?

Well, can we back up to where curly hair and straight hair came from originally? As we know, you know, humans first arrived on our planet in Africa. It was very hot there. So curly hair had an air conditioning effect on the head. Wait, explain what you mean by that.

Curly hair had an air conditioning effect on the head.

Well, it allowed the air to come in and cool their scalps, basically. The ringlets create space, basically. Yes. And the reason why the hair came out curly is that the hair shafts were oval shaped. And so it's like if you were wrapping a gift and you took the hard edge of scissors and ran it across the ribbon, it would curl up.

Yeah. Kind of the same thing. It would come out curl. So when Africans started migrating northward, mostly to get away from deadly viruses that we know today would be like things like Ebola and AIDS or yellow fever, but it was killing a lot of people. So they realized if they moved northward, they could get away from these deadly viruses.

As they moved north, their darker skin, which you know protected them from the rays, grew lighter and their bones got weaker, and all these different things happened. But hair needed to come straight down to protect the scalp because now it was cold and they needed that to keep it warm. So along with skin color, eye color, hair also changed its texture when people started moving to northern climes.

Wow. So there's, you know, who knows to what extent racism, colonialism, all those things affected our perceptions even to this day about, you know, what does curly hair mean? The age of discovery and colonialism. I mean, the English people, who weren't the only ones, but they were predominant, really believed that they were the chosen people.

And they spread the word that you need to look like us, you know, you need to be lighter skinned to be accepted. We're gonna appoint these people over here to be head of their government because they're lighter skinned than the other people. So they began to, you know, really push their values on to other cultures.

And English people, you know, about 15% of white people across all cultures have curly hair, but largely they have straight hair or slightly wavy hair. So, you know, I think that kind of dominance still affects us today. Everything goes back to colonialism.

Always. Yep, it does. I read that you once said that because curly hair was more accepted during the free love era after that, people assumed you were like a wild child if you had curly hair.

Well, the wild child is definitely associated with curly hair. It's that freedom and things are messy and messiness is free and and those kind of perceptions.

Why is it though that we think curly hair is wild? Like, I don't really understand that because I think it can be so incredibly chic. So I want to understand where did this idea come from that it's wild? Is it that people were embracing curly hair during the free love era and therefore it's like, oh, well, if you're still doing that, you're you must be a hippie wild child.

Like, what is it? Or does it go back further to earlier times?

I mean, I can't help but think that there's some undertones of racism to the whole stigma of curly hair, or the embracing of it means wild and free. Curly hair means that you're cooler, you're free, you're less uptight, all those sorts of things.

What was the influence of women, women entering the workforce more and more?

I think that's a really good question. As more women entered the workforce, that's focused like on the 70s and 80s in particular, you saw a lot of women dressing like men to look professional. They had shoulder pads on their jackets, they had little bow ties around their necks. So cute. So all of this was to project a professional, take me seriously kind of message to you know, these women that were for the first time entering in large numbers in professions that were white male dominated.

So I think, you know, the idea that you look more professional the less feminine you look is probably still out there. Curly hair is kind of associated with femininity.

You know, I actually think about this all the time. I mean, as a woman in her mid-30s, I have seen that there are so many people who still believe that this is the case, that you should reject being feminine in the way you appear to be taken more seriously at work. And I just think that's so anti-women ultimately, right?

I mean, wearing lipstick or how much makeup is enough? Should it be only no makeup, makeup, what do you do with your hair? Don't wear bright color. A lot of women don't wear bright colors to work or patterns, and people focus on neutrals. And personally, I've I've always kind of been the opposite of that.

I love color so much, but it's this wholesale rejection of being feminine. And I guess, yeah, the rejection of curly hair is part of that. Strip everything out.

There's so many boundaries for women. You can't be too much this or too much that. And, you know, like for women who are supervisors, you know, if they're very strict, they're called bitchy. If they're too loose, well, they don't have, you know, enough assertiveness in their personality to run this organization.

You know, if your hair is too curly, well, that means they're kind of sloppy and they're not really being taken seriously. We all know it's harder for women in, you know, typical white-collar professional type jobs. Yeah, it's no coincidence that the most powerful country on this planet has never had a female be president.

That's really sad, but it's because it's such a fine line for women in powerful positions to walk.

And Kamala Harris, who did run for that job, president of the United States, by the way, has naturally curly hair. She's half black and half Indian. If you Google any childhood or college photos of her, you'll see it. She told Kiki Palmer in an interview as VP that she blows out her hair using a round brush.

As I said, there are secret curlies everywhere. How do we as a society get to a point where these associations don't exist anymore and people can just be?

Yeah, I don't think we'll ever get there because we're humans and we have hierarchical kind of beliefs about why things should be, which people are better than other people and why. I mean, look at primates, there's always, you know, a caste status system with that. And I think that's part of our nature.

I think, you know, there might be subgroups of people who work really hard not to manifest any of those kind of hierarchical values. But I think when you're talking about the larger society, it's tough. I would like to believe that such a world might exist one day, but I don't really see it. Yeah. Sadly enough.

I do believe that such a world can exist one day, though. And I've heard from others who have made the transition from secretly curly to openly, proudly curly. You heard from Ranya in New York earlier. She's one of them.

I always internalized that curly inherently meant messy, and so I did it all. Like uh Brazilian blowouts, carotene, Japanese straightening, uh, you name it. Until finally, at 30, I found an incredible hairstylist based in New York City who really helped me see how beautiful my curls really were. And it was the first time in my life that I felt like me in my natural curls could also look polished, clean, professional, and put together.

Other secret curlies I talked to were questioning their ideology around curly hair too, thanks to their kids.

Hello, this is Hamza. I started growing my hair out a little bit after my son was born. He has super curly hair, and his mom is so good about keeping it moisturized and making sure he has the right products and taking care of it. And that was a huge inspiration to me. And I think I was one of those people who, from when they were very little, resented their hair or had mixed feelings about it.

I was like, uh, why isn't it straight? Why don't these like gel products work? Why does it get so fuzzy in the humidity? And I went for most of my life keeping it super short, uh, especially in my adult years. And I think for like 10 or more years I got the same super short haircut. Now I'm pushing 40, and I'm seeing my son rock his curls, and I'm like, yes, keep going.

I'm realizing, oh, I can learn how to take care of it, and I am embracing it, and now I'm loving it.

I heard this thought from more than one secret curly that they want their kids to own who they are and that they're inspired to model that for them. And not to get too earnest, but that genuinely makes me so happy. I don't know how I resisted the pressure to straighten my hair when I was younger. So many girls in high school would tell me regularly that I'd look so much better if I did.

And I was thinking about that recently and realized that while my parents were critical immigrants, I've got to say, my mom always told me my hair was special, and she always said that it was part of what Wayne made me, even when I didn't believe it. I hope this episode makes you feel like you should be peak yourself, and let me know if anyone you know is secretly curly or if you are.

And if this conversation made you feel differently about it, email or voice out me at Priya at WeARSpiraling.com. This episode in particular is near and dear to my heart, so I'm looking forward to hearing from you. For more bonus content, go to weare spiraling.com to subscribe to our newsletter. That's where we keep the conversation going between episodes and talk about all things curly.

Please rate and subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. I'm Priya Anand, very obviously and not at all secretly curly. This episode was produced by Citizens of Sound and hosted by my upcoming hair care line, Myura. Fun fact, Myura means peacock in Sanskrit. To me, having curly hair is such a huge part of my identity, and that's how I came up with the brand name.

Sign up for our wait list at MyuraBeauty.com. Theme music by Lopgun. Special thanks to all the secret curlies who shared their stories with me for this episode and to Underborn Subramanian and Nico Grant. Catch you next time.

Why Are So Many People Secretly Curly? (Refresh)

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