Lately I find myself having this back and forth debate with myself about workplace "appropriate" hair styles. I'm sure I'm not alone when I say that Instagram is a daily source of Hairspiration for me and I can literally spend hours just scrolling through natural hair pages.
I started to notice through my daily scroll down my IG feed that every time I found a style that I wanted to try I was almost talking myself out of it, scared of how my job would feel if I rolled into work on Monday looking more ethnic than usual LOL I would see popping hair colors or beautiful braided styles and yet I'm so hesitant based off of what someone else's perception of me might be.
One day I finally decided that I DON'T CARE.
Who decided what hairstyles are "appropriate" for the workplace? Why am I scared to express myself in the ways that I want? If they feel differently about me simply because of the way I wear my hair do I really even want to work at a place like that anyway?
As long as I show up everyday ready to work and I look presentable it shouldn't matter if my hair was metallic blue. I'm almost ashamed to say this now but when I first started I was scared to wear my hair in my natural bush. I literally wore nothing but extensions when I first started. If I did a twist out I would barely pluck out my curls, so my bush would be super small almost as if I just had a tiny perm rod set. It's almost as if I was trying to make myself as small as possible so no one would notice the black girl. It actually wasn't until my female boss at the time and another female coworker saw a picture of my natural curls and made a fuss over how nice my hair looked, that I began to loosen up a bit. From there I began plucking my twists outs fully out, letting my wash n go's flourish, and letting my high puffs reach as high as they possibly could.
Even with me regaining my self confidence I still hesitated with certain styles. I've been literally DYING for braids since the Spring started. But every time I would be on the verge of getting them I would talk myself out of it. A million questions literally swirling through my mind about what everyone's first impression will be and what would they think?!?!?!?!? I remember having a conversation with my line sister Tasha about it and her response was literally:
Go with the most ethnic style and see how they react.
After she said that it really hit me that I was tripping. I'm letting my fear of what other people may think of me stop me from being me and that's never OK. I walked into 2018 saying I was going to be unapologetically myself and there's no way half way through I'm backing down now. So I say all of that to say that I finally got my braids y'all.
