Unit One Blog

After reading Tina Fey’s, Bossypants, I reflected on my own life in regard to my self-image. Up until a couple of years ago, I struggled with my identity as a biracial woman. My mother is African American, and my father is Caucasian. Luckily, Martinsburg is a fairly diverse area. I have relatives and friends whom are also both black and white, so I never felt alone or singled out. However, I disliked an exceedingly amount of aspects about myself.

For one, I hated my hair texture. When I was born my hair was actually bone straight. Then as time progressed, it started to curl more and more. My parents did what they could to maintain it and it looked fairly nice. Which I applaud them for. However, when it came time for me to do my own hair, I had no idea what I was doing. Whenever I tried, it just never turned out good. It was always too frizzy, too greasy, or too tangled to even get a comb through. My older cousins, who had similar hair to mine would have their hair flat ironed. So that’s when I decided to turn to the straightener. My saving grace! Or so I thought. I started going to the salon to have my hair straightened all the time. In my mind it was easier and looked better. Not to mention, most of my friends had perfectly straight hair. I remember thinking to myself, “Man, they have it so easy”. After years and years of constantly putting heat on my hair, unfortunately my hair gradually became damaged.

Another physical trait I hated was my skin tone. My mom is a fairly dark-skinned woman and I felt I came out “too light”. I constantly compared myself to other girls, especially biracial ones. I was so insecure with my skin color that my freshman year of high school, I bought self-tanner (total fail) to try to conform to the “right” skin shade. I also hated being labeled as “mixed”. I hated people telling me, “ You don’t act white” or “You don’t act black”. Whatever that even means. As far as being labeled “not white enough” or “not black enough”, I never quite knew what to do about that. I tried to be true to who I was, until I didn’t know who that was anymore.

Then, one day something miraculously occurred to me. Who cares! It’s just hair. So what that you have curly hair? Just accept it and move on. So I did. I grabbed the little scissors that I’ve had since Kindergarten and cut my hair to my shoulders. I probably should have had a professional do it but oh well. It actually turned out okay! I wanted to do a big chop to recover from the years of damage. I learned what products to use and treatments to follow. That was nearly two years ago. Since then, my hair has done a complete turnaround. To this day, I still give myself trims with my little Kindergartener scissors. Who cares that you’re not super tan? Who cares if someone doesn’t think you’re “white enough” or “black enough”? Why is that even important? I’m just Olivia and that is all that is important to me. I allowed those people to make me feel small and question who I was. I chose not to embrace my skin tone. I chose not to learn how to take care of my natural hair. Then I realized that I do control how I look and who I want to be. Nobody else. I have come such a long way and have never felt prouder and more confident in my skin than I do right now.

I wrote the first Response Paper on Fey’s essay, All Girls Must Be Everything. I enjoyed her message to women that we should not be conforming to this damaging, unrealistic list of perfections. I particularly found it both interesting, yet subtle when Fey said, “We have to lead by example” (pg 24). I completely agree with that. I’m not saying it’s easy. Accepting oneself and being comfortable in one’s body is not an overnight task. I think if we take it one day at a time we’ll get there! I plan to continue on growing and empowering other women in my journey of self-love.

Fey, Tina. Bossypants: All Girls Must Be Everything, Little, Brown and Company, 2011.

 My Kindergarten scissors! I can't believe I allow myself to use these to cut anything, let alone my hair.














My damaged natural hair in high school.

My hair now!