“Dear Kid Who Called My Three Year Old’s Hair ‘Big’ and Pointed and Laughed, While His Mother Looked On and Smiled,” by Samantha Rodman

Jul 22nd, 2015 | By | Category: Nonfiction, Prose

I understand that you’re only four, but I am going to take this opportunity to educate you about hair discrimination, as your parents apparently have not done. It’s not their fault they are unintelligent and ill-mannered. Your mother has straight, shiny, Pantene ad hair, and I bet your dad does too. Sadly, to the world at large, their beautiful, movie-star-like hair completely obscures their callous, empty souls and lack of social graces.

Hair discrimination is real, but you may find it difficult to understand. You and your genetically superior parents have all been graced by the good fortune of naturally straight hair. My curly haired child and I have not. When straight haired people picture curly hair, they picture straight, shiny hair that has been curled with a curling iron. This is the fault of people like Nicole Kidman, who, although they have naturally curly hair, have their hair blown straight and then curled before going out into public. THIS IS NOT WHAT CURLY HAIR LOOKS LIKE. (I would give you another curly haired famous person example, but there is none. This is because curly hair is the hidden shameful bastard child of hair types. Wavy and straight are all over the media. Where’s curly? Exactly.)

Curly hair and straight hair are completely different. Like parents who teach their kids to be polite, and parents like your mom. Curly hair has a different type of hair cuticle, which is the part of the hair that covers each strand. This means that, especially when it is humid, my daughter’s hair cuticle opens up and her hair sucks up moisture from the environment like a sponge. It then grows in diameter. It looks “big.” But if you call it “big,” this is not nice. Here are people who don’t have curly, or big, hair:

– Princesses
– Movie stars
– Taylor Swift
– Any woman that your dad thinks about while he sleeps with your cold, heartless mother

Here are things that people say to little girls with curly hair, hypothetically:

– “Samantha can’t be Cinderella, because she has curly hair.”
– “Samantha, how come your hair looks like that?”
– “Samantha, why don’t you just brush your hair?”
– “Samantha, maybe you should just wet it or something.”
– “Samantha, your hair is so big!”

It is a real blow to a child’s developing self-esteem to have to deal with idiots who believe that she is somehow intending her hair to look as though it has been electrocuted, and who assume that she has not tried every single anti-frizz product in existence, or worse, that she has not attempted to “just brush it.” Do you, or your shiny-locked vacuous mother know what brushing does to curly hair? It’s like what would happen if I were pitted against her in a Scrabble tournament. Utter devastation within moments.

To conclude, please break the cycle of straight haired people making rude, ill-informed, immature comments to their curly haired brethren. Also, tell your mother that I can get my hair straightened but she can’t get a brain transplant.

Sincerely,

Samantha Rodman
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Defenestration-Samantha RodmanSamantha Rodman is a clinical psychologist and blogs at Dr. Psych Mom. She’s been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, Scary Mommy, Babble, and others. She’s originally from Brooklyn and now live in Maryland. She was on Nightline the other day as an “oversharent,” which is equally cool and embarrassing.

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