Read the personal statement below and find the author's insight! "Auntie it's time! My scalp is burning!" With her yellow chemical gloves and black pointed-tooth comb, she scooped and spread the white annihilator, evenly coating my curls, subduing them bone straight when the process was done. Physically, it was painful, but a look in the mirror flooded my being with euphoria. I felt beautiful, a little closer to the models I saw on my television and in magazines. While the TV girls had white skin, straight hair and thin long bodies, in my community, two of those markers, light skin and straight hair, was all I needed. I now had both. In that moment, the idea of going back to my thick curls was inconceivable. Every three months, I endured excruciating pain, but my addiction to the creamy crack was too severe to go without. Washing my hair every two weeks at my aunt's house was the same process: rinse, look in the mirror to see dead, limp hair, put in rollers, go under the dryer, unroll big, flat, inauthentic curls from the rollers, straighten the hair twice, and wrap it. It is rare for a person with African origins to have hair without a natural curl pattern. The process was painful and damaging to my hair and health, but the high of this chemical fusion was too satisfying to relinquish. I did not have to worry about my hair puffing up into an afro. While I had been always been praised in the black community for my fairer - which is really to say not dark - complexion, the addition of long, straight hair gave me the holy grail of beauty in a black community- a community that has learned through history to hate itself. In school, my peers would compliment my hair, and I felt that euphoria creep back in. But in the twisted hierarchy of colorism, resembling the Eurocentric standard of beauty was both revered and resented. I wasn't white enough and wasn't black enough. Sometimes I was "so pretty" and other times I was "stuck up.' 39 I started to notice social media platforms instigating a "light-skin versus dark-skin" rivalry in the black community. It made me feel misplaced and uncomfortable. I realized this self-hate had been handed down to me consciously and subconsciously for generations, through racist media and my own loved ones. Accepting the compliments was silently endorsing colorism, and thus a rejection of my roots. Idolizing Eurocentric beauty was a rejection of myself. I had internalized my oppression. The solution? To transition back to natural, back to my original texture, and to abandon the beauty standards I had been raised to aspire to. Every month for a year, two inches of my permed hair were chopped off as I allowed my curls to sprout, transition, and grow. Caring for my hair every week is a new process: wash, look in the mirror to see tight red curls, apply castor oil and leave in conditioner, brush up into a bun, or twist the hair, or bantu knot the hair, or leave the afro. Instead of fire-bombing my hair with chemicals, I am nurturing it, cherishing it, letting it take up space. Embracing my natural curls is a tiny, yet profound, step in the direction of loving myself and my black community. I refuse to allow myself to partake in the false divisiveness of colorism. I am defying the notion that just because we are black we don't deserve the same right to embrace multiple images of beauty and strength. I am making a radical choice to accept the complications. I deserve to love myself and the distinctive physical attributes of my black ancestry. I will pave a path for myself and my black community to make the choice to shamelessly flaunt their hair. Their curls, their relaxed hair, their braids. Their choice.