Where the Story Really Began

It wasn’t truly my hair I was fighting - it was the societal conditioning I’d absorbed about what was “beautiful” and “acceptable.”

Some of those messages came from the world around me.
Some, heartbreakingly, came from within my own home.

One of my earliest memories are of being told that I look like a Sri Lankan male actor (Vijaya Kumaratunga) - meant as a light-hearted joke, but to me, it stung and left a mark to this day.
I began to wish for different hair, slowly believing I needed it to be accepted.

Then there were the mornings before school when I was younger - rushed and chaotic.
On difficult days, my hair was combed in frustration and if my hair didn’t cooperate, the brush was left dangling from my head for me to deal with.
Somewhere along the line, I started to believe I was “too hard to look after.”

Both of my parents have curls too, but I inherited not just their hair type - I inherited their unhealed relationship with their own hair.
Growing up, I’d watch my mum spend a lot of time and money on keratin treatments, learning silently that curly hair was something to be “fixed".
I was told I was too young to have those treatments, but I was eagerly looking forward to the day I could.

The Deep Cuts of Comparison

I was the only curly-haired child in my family. My siblings’ hair seemed easier to manage and more admired.

In Sri Lanka, salons wouldn’t just cut your hair - they’d blow-dry it straight if you have natural curls, as though doing you a favour.
My mum would specifically request stylists to reduce my hair volume, using phrases like she has yaksha konde (demon hair).

At special occasions, I’d sit in a salon chair, waiting for the magical transformation.
Once my hair was sleek and straight, I felt “presentable”. I’d delay washing it, holding onto that version of myself for as long as possible.
At school, those days were met with “Wow! Good hair day!” - and although I smiled, it hurt to know that version of me wasn’t my true self.

When Curls Became the Villain

The media had a way of teaching beauty standards without ever needing to say the words out loud. Sometimes it shouted, sometimes it whispered, but the message always found its way in.
In Sri Lanka, shampoo ads would feature fair-skinned women with pin-straight hair, faces and features that felt so far from my own reality.

In movies, the same template repeated itself: For instance; in Tangled, the shining heroine was crowned with long, straight blonde hair, while the villain was marked by dark, curly locks. In The Princess Diaries,  the makeover scene suggested that curls represented the “before,” while sleek, straight hair symbolised the “after.” In Harry Potter,  Bellatrix Lestrange’s chaotic curls became a cue for chaos and madness.

Again and again, curls were coded as “messy,” “unruly,” or “untrustworthy.” The rare exception was Brave (2012), where curls were finally shown as beautiful - but even then, they belonged to a fair-skinned, red-haired character. Never dark skin. Never dark hair. Never someone who looked like me, or like so many other South Asian girls.

That kind of absence speaks loudly - and it’s a silence I believe many curly-haired girls have felt linger.

When Everything Began to Change

Then I met someone.

One of the very first things my partner ever said to me was that he loved my natural hair and preferred it over when I straightened it.
I honestly thought he was legally blind. I’d never been complimented on my curls before, so I couldn’t believe him.

Once, while we were talking about movies, he even mentioned that he actually liked Mother Gothel’s hair in Tangled more than Rapunzel’s.
To me, that sounded absurd - she was the villain, and her curls were part of the “messy and untrustworthy” image I had been conditioned to dislike.
I was so deeply wired to see straight hair as the only kind of beautiful that I assumed he was being sarcastic.

And truthfully… I didn’t believe him. Not for years.
But over time, his love for the things I tried to hide started rubbing off on me.
Everything I was insecure about… he celebrated.
He helped me see that what I thought made me less, made me me.

A Wet Pillow and a Turning Point

One night, I went to bed with wet hair and woke up to defined curl clumps.
I decided not to brush them out - just for once - because I felt like they looked good.
That tiny decision felt like a breakthrough. For a while, I thought I was a genius: “Just sleep with wet hair, that’s the trick!”

Of course, it wasn’t sustainable (my poor pillow), but it planted a seed.

A New Country, A New Chapter

That seed took root when I moved to Australia for university. Away from old voices and expectations, I finally had space to create my own identity.
For the first time, I was simply me. And I wanted to meet that version of myself.

The Real Hair Journey

In Australia, strangers would stop me to compliment my hair and skin tone.
At first, it startled me. Other than my partner, no one had ever praised those traits before.

That curiosity led me down a rabbit hole of research. I stumbled across videos on curly hair care - things like the Curly Girl Method. I experimented, learning about hydration, curl patterns, protein-moisture balance, etc.
For my birthday, my partner gifted me a hair diffuser - a simple tool that felt like freedom.

Piece by piece, I built a routine that worked for me. And somewhere along the way, I stopped trying to “tame” my hair and started honouring it.

One of the very first people I shared this discovery with was my mum.
I longed for her to see her own beauty the way I was beginning to see mine.
I wanted her to feel the liberation I felt when I stopped fighting my reflection.
I sent her products, tutorials, everything I thought might help her reconnect with her curls. But unfortunately, years of conditioning had left their mark, that she still finds herself turning to keratin treatments, believing her curls need to be "fixed".

Today: My Curls, My Confidence

I no longer see my curls as something to battle. They are part of me - a symbol of everything I’ve reclaimed.

They’ve taught me that beauty isn’t about fitting into someone else’s mould;
it’s about living in your own, fully and unapologetically.