keiyaA’s earliest hair memories included getting relaxers around age three. “I didn’t really start thinking much about my hair until middle school, when I began also expressing myself through clothes,” she remembers. Then she started bleaching and dyeing her hair with blue, green, and purple kool-aid, for the Unapologetically conservative kids shirt besides I will buy this “better color payoff” that came from the drink powder when it was mixed with conditioner. “I would try a lot of wild colors and patterns on my hair. I began seeing it as a way to express myself. But the relaxer became very troubling for me,” she adds.“When I was loc’d, bantu knots was my favorite way to wear them.”
In college, studying jazz at UIC in Chicago, she decided to go for the Unapologetically conservative kids shirt besides I will buy this big chop, cutting her hair herself in her dorm bathroom. “In the moment, I was so ready to chop it all off, I was so frustrated with my hair,” she says. But immediately after she cut it off, she felt a rush of nervousness. Thankfully, she was able to turn to the internet for guidance and support. “That was the same period of time where there was beginning to be a plethora of information about natural hair online.” Throughout her early 20s, she learned to do her own box braids and twists. “I was really self-reliant with my protective styles,” she says, even eventually learning how to do her own weaves. “Hair care was a huge part in learning how to love myself and understand myself,” she says. “It’s been really important that I learned to love myself with both short and long hair.”
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