Storytime: I'm Guilty of Texture Envy

We’ve all been victim to texture envy during one point in our journey. When I first transitioned, I didn’t know what to expect of my hair when I BC’d. In fact, when I did BC, I didn’t have a present natural curl pattern. It didn’t matter at that time to me because I was mostly rocking Two Strand Twists.

But even then, the Green-eyed monster reared its ugly head.

As most newly natural naturals, I took to YouTube and was obsessed with all the different curl and coil types there were. At the beginning of my journey, there wasn’t much representation of the different hair types and if I had to type myself, I would type myself as 4B/4C. But that quickly changed and even though more 4C vloggers became known, I still wanted that looser, silkier hair and bigger natural curls.

And I have that type of hair. As a matter of fact, the base of my neck right in the middle is my silkier, looser texture with S curls. Actually, most of the back of my hair is silkier, with medium sized S Curls that eventually narrow down in smaller O shaped coils the closer it got to either side of my head. And that was that S curl hair that I wished I had all over my head.

It was hard for me to keep my more kinkier textures moisturized and I hated those sections of my hair for that. I wanted it to be like that silkier section in the back. In fact, I loved that section so much and hated the rest of my hair so much that it was starting to tear me apart and eat away at me, making my journey tougher than it should be.

The only time I didn’t hate that section is when I was wearing twists. Unlike the rest of my hair, that section doesn’t have a lot of shrinkage so my twists would just hang to oblivion in the section and make my whole head of twists look awkward.

Let’s not even get into WNGs. That section was so easy to define. Each single curl would stand out, loud and proud while the rest of my hair was just an undefined, kinky puff, shrunken to oblivion with coils so small you need a magnifying glass to see them.

But as I learned about my hair more and more, I started to change my tune. When I learned the true nature of my coils, I started to like them more and actually started to like the silkier section less and less (but not completely).

Now, I accept my hair for what it is. I still have a bit of texture envy. I mean, I wish that silkier section was more like my kinkier section but I don’t hate it. And I surely don’t let it eat away at me.

I still struggle with my hair on the day-to-day basis but I love my coils and curls in all their tiny glory!