Spaghetti, Cauliflower-like, Burnt-to-Crisp Hair: Anomaly to Some, Home to Others.

An article about rebellion, self-love, struggle and super ‘dirty’ hair; since ‘dirty’ is what curls have been called.

The rain arrived in thin grey streaks, the sky weighed down with tearful clouds. Outside the school gate, Shreya’s mother held an umbrella carefully above her daughter’s head — not to keep her dry, but to protect her hair. Water would undo the straightening, undoing hours of effort. Shreya, barely in her teens, stood silently beneath the umbrella, her hair shielded from what it naturally was.

She is quiet, introverted, her presence kind and contained. Her hair is tightly pulled back, frizz combed into submission, smoothened as firmly as possible. She wears a black hoodie, her frame small, her eyes tired in a way that suggests long nights bent over textbooks. She is socially aware, but only little energy is left for resistance.

Hair care, for her, has never been gentle. She remembers her mother’s impatient hands brushing her hair roughly, violently; trying to pull them into becoming normal. Shreya would scream and cry, eventually refusing to let her mother touch her hair at all. What should have been a routine became something to survive.

Curly hair does not look like a problem. It blends easily into the background of everyday life; in how hair is brushed, corrected, straightened, or spoken about. It does not announce itself the way more visible forms of discrimination do, and it is rarely acknowledged as one. Because it is so often dismissed as a matter of “preference” or “presentation,” its impact goes largely unnoticed, even as it shapes habits, expectations, and self-perception, teaching young people how to negotiate their appearance, their gender, and their place in the world.

The same expectations follow Shree, but she refuses to stay quiet. She talks back, jokes to showcase her rebellion, and insists on being heard despite being exhausted after the academic stress of a 9th grader. The pressure does not loosen; it simply collides with a voice that is less willing to absorb it in silence.

Shree is fifteen, short and lean, a restless current of energy contained in a navy-blue school tunic and circular purple-rimmed glasses that perches on her nose. Her thick curls are usually tied into a messy bun, stubborn strands escaping the rubber band. At home, the instruction was constant: keep it clean, brush it all the time. When she recounts this, she rolls her eyes automatically. “You can’t comb it every day,” she says, the sentence landing with practiced ease; an explanation she has clearly given before. She laughs easily, talks openly, and dissects the rules placed on her appearance with sharp awareness, even as the labour of maintaining her hair exhausts her.

Some days, the effort feels endless; others, it feels almost absurd.

“I can’t even tie my hair without it looking like a cauliflower,” she jokes.

The effort behind curls are precise, almost technical. She lists it off without pausing — oil or a hair mask, washing twice, multiple conditioners, leave-ins that aren’t to be washed out, mousse and gels. The rule that matters most comes last: never brush it dry. Only finger-comb, and only when the hair is wet. The routine is not indulgence; it is survival.

Without it, curls collapse into something she knows will be read as neglect. Even with it, the results are unpredictable. Caring for her hair, she says, is painful, time-consuming, and often exhausting — a daily negotiation with something that refuses to be low-maintenance. She understands, better than most adults around her, why the negotiation exists at all.

Straight hair follicles, she explains, grow symmetrically; curly ones emerge from asymmetric follicles, which naturally bend the strands. No amount of brushing can change that. Straightening only forces temporary obedience, often at the cost of damage.

“The only way it might actually stay straight,” she adds dryly, “is probably if you go bald; and no one wants that.”

Plus keratin molecules in curly hair form extra bonds, pulling strands closer together. That’s why the hair reacts differently to brushing since it frizzes, and refuses to change no matter how many products or routines are tried.

Once when Shree went to a salon for a haircut, she told the stylist upfront, “Mere curly baal hain,” (My hair is curly), asking him to cut it accordingly. He replied with, “Haan toh karlenge na straight,” as a matter-of-fact. She remembers sitting there, knowing the response was wrong, and saying nothing. Shyness filled the space where refusal should have been. It was easier to let the assumption stand, that straightening was inevitable, that curls were merely a problem to be corrected later.

Shree is quick to point out that these ideas do not stop with women. Men with long, curly hair, she notes, are often assumed to be ganja smugglers or cheap criminals, their appearance read as a mascot of moral failure. The same logic surfaces in how body hair is spoken about, often hated on women because it is associated with masculinity. Appearance, in these moments, becomes a way of enforcing gender.

When she zooms out, her analysis sharpens further. Shree traces modern beauty standards back to colonial influence, when European features, white skin, straight hair, specific facial structures, were linked to superiority. Those ideals, she says, have been passed down conspicuously through generations. She is careful not to assign blame easily. Conditioning is inherited, she acknowledges.

“Unlearning is difficult,” she admits thoughtfully.

If Shree’s story felt like a river in rapids, a current of energy, twisting and turning through rules, expectations, and routines; Rashmika’s story would feel like sunlight — optimistic, warm and growth-oriented. She enters the conversation like a breeze through an open window, embracing and confident, her words flowing as naturally as her honey-gold curls down her shoulders.

An English teacher and a sharp observer of human behaviour, she speaks with the ease of someone who has spent years dissecting language and stories. Her laughter is hearty and unrestrained, and her eyes gleam with curiosity as she gestures gently with her hands, weaving thoughts into words. She wears a red sleeveless ethnic jacket over a black tee, paired with a white, silky long skirt, her presence exuding quiet strength and femininity.

“Humans always want to have something they don’t have,” she says, almost an actual halo of gold forming behind her, reflecting on how straight-haired people curl their hair and curly-haired people straighten theirs. There is no rancour in her observation; only clarity, patience, and a quiet joy in the contradictions of beauty.

As a child, Rashmika often felt different. In a Punjabi family with long, thick, straight black hair, her curls marked her as an anomaly. “I was a serial straightener," she recalls, laughter dancing in her eyes as she admits that she straightened her hair to crisp quite often. Her family urged her not to obsess over appearance, yet to remain “presentable.” Her relationship with her curls evolved as she grew older. Where once she longed for normalcy, now she finds delight in her natural texture.

Reading stories became a revelation: in God of Small Things, a male protagonist with dark, curly hair is described as attractive, a rarity Rashmika noticed in a world where beauty is often coded otherwise.

“I felt so noticed when I read that,” she says, eyes sparkling as she talks about a read-aloud book, 'Spaghetti in a hot dog bun'.

Rashmika’s insight extends beyond hair. She sees beauty as more subjective around in society now that the narrative is constantly being rewritten by younger generations.

“The younger people around me are setting the narrative for what beauty can be.” she says, her honey-gold curls catching the light, hands expressive, voice warm and resonant. She finds it exhilarating that the rigid rules she once herself with are loosening, replaced by diversity, acceptance, and openness.

Curly hair is never just hair. For Shreya, it is frizz forced into submission; for Shree, it is rebellious coils; for Rashmika, it is confident, defined, cascading curls. Across all of them, it carries history, expectations, and the weight of spoken-unspoken beauty standards. And yet, through the routines, the jokes, the rebellions, and the reflections, it becomes something more: a path to self-discovery.

As Rashmika puts it, “The beauty brands never want you to accept yourself.”

For these women, finding that acceptance, messy, complicated, and utterly their own, is where the real beauty lies. Each of them finds ways to live with it, shape it, and sometimes, even celebrate it. In those daily negotiations, of care, of style, of self, curls persist, quietly claiming space in a world that too often wants them tamed.

(Note: The names in this article have been changed to maintain anonymity.)

Written by Aaliya Jha, Grade 9, Avasara Academy, Pune

Aaliya wrote this article as a participant of the Media-Makers Fellowship's Nov'25 cohort.