Since forever Elanor has loved her hair. She liked to get it styled or have it down and long like Rapunzel. On top of that EVERYONE loves her hair. Everywhere she goes people are complimenting her and Adeline about how they love their curly hair. But there has either been a wrench thrown in that or its just a little phase. I'm hoping it's the latter. Elanor doesn't like her hair anymore.
Elanor has been saying recently that she does not like her curly hair and she doesn't like the color. She wants straight hair and she wants it to be blonde. What the heck?! Where's this coming from? We do our best to be super positive about our bodies, shapes, sizes, colors, etc. She has an assortment of dolls of different ethnicities and hair styles/colors. We got into sort of a long conversation today and I was asking her why she doesn't like her hair. She mentioned it can be hard to comb. Well yeah, but this is how I tried to fix it...I told her I CAN'T comb my hair, hahaha. What an idiot! But I tried telling her how God made her that way, how pretty it is and how I and all the people she meets love it. What makes me think it is a phase is she said she can't do any styles with it. But, her mom and grammy do super cool stuff with her and her sister's hair with braids and buns, etc. A friend was telling me that when her daughters saw mine at a wedding with their braids they were so jealous and wanted their hair braided like that.
So as a guy I was trying to find a fix (yes I know it's just time) so I searched for cool styles for curly hair. I found this girl on Youtube who does styling tutorials for curly hair. I wanted to show her that she could do tons of styles with her hair. Plus, this girl has dark hair. We watched it and half way through she was saying there were so many she liked she'd have a hard time picking. She was getting excited. So was I. Once we were done she was asking me for bobby pins but I was trying to get a snack ready for them. So, she proceeded to use toy forks to stick in her hair and here's the really funny part, in the video the girl is talking and explaining what she does. As Elanor was putting forks in her hair she was just doing her own commentary.
I know this is not going to be the last time I have to deal with this. People don't like to talk about it but mainstream American media is white and geared towards whites. Just flip channels, commercials, magazines, etc. There have been studies that show that women of color tend to think that their skin and natural hair is not as pretty as fair skin and straight hair. I'm not placing blame on race but it is a reality that we live in in America. I just hope and pray that being in our family makes it easier. We have many different skin tones, hair colors and styles, and Erika and I try to be as positive and affirming as possible and to not place so much emphasis on looks.
I'm pretty sure it's just a simple phase and it'll be over soon. But, I want to continue laying a foundation for her to love herself. I could be making this a bigger deal than it is but I love my girls and I want them to love themselves.
Well, their Nani has blonde hair and they love to comb it. That's it, it's Nani's fault.
Here's the video I showed Elanor:
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