This post brought to you by Dove and The Motherhood. All opinions are my own! #LoveYourHair
As a teen I always hated my hair. I had thick, wavy hair and had no idea what to do with it. I had always wished I had straight hair. It seemed so much easier to manage and I just loved the look of straight hair. It took me years to embrace my natural hair and really start to love it. I finally realized that my hair was unique to me, it was my hair, and I had the best of both worlds because I could wear it curly or straight. When my daughter, at a young age, started to tell me she didn’t like her hair it made me really sad. She sees all the princesses on TV with blonde straight hair and she wanted that. After many talks about how her hair was beautiful the way it was she stopped bringing up “princess hair” and I was so happy to have dogged that bullet.
Once she start kindergarten she would come home and say how she was the only girl in class with curly hair. My response was always that her hair was unique and she has something they didn’t have, but she wanted straight hair like her friends. After asking a few times for straight hair we sat down and flat ironed her hair. She excitedly ran to the bathroom and had a look of shock on her face. She was so used to her curly hair that she didn’t know what to think of straight hair. She came home many more times complaining about her hair and I knew the pep talks weren’t working much anymore. Since my daughter is mixed race she has bi-racial hair and it’s gorgeous, but I also don’t know what I’m doing with it. I joined a few natural hair groups online, found some good hair products, and tried a few fun new styles on her hair – like pigtail braids, french braid, and some hair style that’s tied back in sections. She came home from school gushing about how all the girls in her class loved her hair and her new hair styles. I always did her hair pretty basic for school, with a pony tail, so her long curly hair wouldn’t get too tangled, but this lesson had taught me that I needed to take more time to make her hair fun so she would love it and others would as well.
Did you know that 8 out of 10 woman feel pressured to wear their hair a certain way? Sadly, girls start disliking their hair at a young age and I have experienced this first hand. Dove Hair believes a positive role model can greatly impact a girl’s confidence. In fact, a recent Dove study found that 82% of girls learn to care about themselves from their mother. I’ve always read that girls get their confidence from their mother’s so I try hard to make sure my confidence shines through so that my girls will see that and follow. I know this isn’t the end of our “I don’t like my hair journey”, but I hope that instilling in my girls at a young age that their hair is beautiful, unique, and only theirs that it will help them to love it from early on. As a mother it’s our job to make a difference and help ensure our daughters grow up feeling confident and beautiful. Celebrate the beauty of your daughter’s hair today and everyday – so she loves her hair tomorrow.
Let your daughter know how much you love her hair by creating a personalized video from Dove.
