In apersonal video packagethat aired on Monday and included interviews with her parents, Terry and Debra Davis, and her own statements, Davis spoke of her near-lifelong struggle to embrace her natural hair.
“Growing up, my hair texture was misunderstood. My tight curls were difficult for mom to manage,” Davis said in the video. “Unknowingly, I internalized this idea that straight hair was good hair and Afro hair like mine was not.”
Davis cited the racial reckoning that followedGeorge Floyd’s 2020 murder as the spark for a “quiet movement among Black women” that involved starting locs in their hair as a form of freedom and self-expression. But nothing about revealing her natural hair on television was a decision that Davis took lightly or came to quickly.
“There’s an emotional exhaustion in waking up and braiding your hair down and putting a wig on top of it to appear presentable for other people every day,” Davis tells PEOPLE. “And I got tired of it. I started my locs with the intention of this day coming.”
The weight of Juneteenth felt like the right day for Davis to embrace her natural self and her “hair liberation,” she says. “This has been years in the making for me. There is a mental switch that happens before someone makes a decision like this, introducing you to their parents and sharing their personal story. And the switch has been happening for the last couple of years. Why not embrace who I am? It’s me.”
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“I feel free. I feel liberated. I feel inspired. I feel powerful,” she tells PEOPLE, with clear overwhelm and joy in her voice. “There is power that comes with being your true self. I feel like I can take on anything.”
source: people.com
