I never knew I needed a song to express how I’ve been feeling since I realized the difference between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ hair. When I was younger I secretly thrived over the fact that the white girls would surround me and pat my hair like some foreign object that they had never seen before. Their comments would range between “wow, it’s actually pretty soft!” or “ how do you wash it?" I would just simply smile through gritted teeth and reassure myself that these comments came from a place of awe and admiration and just take them into stride.

As I grew older, I began to decipher that these comments weren’t coming from a place of sheer curiosity but laced with a undertone of malice and disbelief. How can someone of her complexion and background obtain hair that defies gravity and withholds conditions that seem nearly impossible.

Brainwashed and surround by people who didn’t look like me, I began the process of perming and pressing my hair to the point that my head was riddled with split ends and bangs that would have my great-grandmother rolling in her grave. I didn’t want my hair because all I have seen my whole entire life was girls with hair like silk, thin and pink stapled that laid down with a brush or push behind the ear.

I was ashamed with what was bestowed upon me. I didn’t want anything to do with it.

So I tried to be like them. I would wash my hair every day, riddled with sulfate shampoo and harsh hair spray that made my hair crunchier than a pack of ramen noodles.

I looked a mess but I didn’t care but I looked like them.

I fit it in.

Then, my car began to fall out. Years of mistreatment and abused all because I wanted to fit into something that wasn’t for me and will never be for me.

So I had to take a setback and reevaluate who I was becoming and how I destroyed a perfectly good grade of hair trying to be like those girls who would snicker at me because my hair wasn’t down past my ass and turned their noses up because I couldn’t wash my hair every day. I was disgusting. I wasn’t one of them.

I went through years of people running their unwanted fingers through my hair and asking very intrusive questions about why my hair did this and that. I would simply grit my teeth, cheeks warm with embarrassment and answer back in a clipped tone that I was trying my best, flat ironing my hair, running away from oils and other products that would improve my hair tremendously, and sit and stare at myself in the mirror and ask God why I couldn’t have the same hair.

The best thing that happened to, not only my hair, but my overall few of myself, was attending a Historically Black College. Sure I was checked a few times about how I spoke but everything I obtained from college was helpfully and helped shape me into the woman I have become today.

For the first time in a long time, I was okay with my hair and hair itself. I was surrounded by people who were like me, who offered advice and helped me flourish into a strong self-loving black women who is in love with her hair and most importantly herself.

So now, when I come across those girls who taunted me about something that naturally grew out of my scalp, I look at them and swat their hair and politely tell them, “Don’t Touch My Hair.” Appreciate the brilliance from afar.