Dear White Women,

Unkempt, dirty, and strange are three words you’re likely to hear when someone is talking about black hair.

Or, instead of talking someone goes straight to walking their hand in it because of its arrogant flare…

October 16th, I was in line at Starbucks for my normal cold brew order, when Helen over here walked over. “Is it yours?” She asked as she looped her grimy fingers besmirched of entitlement inside of my curls as if I was on all fours.

Oh dear. The next words are near. Before I can stop it, I see it in the distance! “I think I’ll get my hair like that next,” Your words ring out with persistence.

Leaving me more than perplexed. My box braids can’t take the pain, and neither can my lion’s mane.

From the Rastafarian religion, Miley and Kylie knew just a smidgen. Only a bit when they saw the coarse dreads and had the nerve to let it grace their heads.

And at last, my culture had fallen to the vultures- but wait there’s even more. Do they even know what Natty means?

Of course not they’re just entitled teens. No ones subject to their ignorance right? Especially when white?

I was bullied in the sixth grade for my cornrows, yet here Mackenzie is screaming out “I want those!”

It’d mean the world to me if my father would me dread my head, but alas he would rather drop dead. Because he knows that I’d be persecuted, or just seen as unsuited.

So why is it Miley, Kylie, Kendall, Justin, and Gaga are viewed as style icons? While Future, Young Thug, Zendaya, and Marley are seen as bygones?

Some argue that it’s just hair, but oh how that’s not fair.

My hair, the complexity of its nature has just been trampled on for enjoyment without respect of the masses for years, and they’ve been deaf to it in both ears.