Tell Us Your Curl Story! My Curl Story - Winnie

In December 2020 we started a call on Instagram and asked you for your personal curl stories. We'd love to share them here on our blog. This is Winnie's story.  

„I grew up with my white mother in Germany. For as long as I can remember, she always cut my hair very short because she didn't know how to handle it.  

As a child I so often wished for long straight hair, and sometimes I wrapped a towel or something similar around my head in front of the mirror to see what long hair would look like on me.

Until I was 16, my hair was always short and was cut to 9 mm every few months by white hairdressers. Everything changed when I went on a ten month student exchange to the USA at 16. Going to the drugstore there was a whole new world for me. I must have spent hours in front of the shelves looking closely at all the different natural hair products. Suddenly there were also many more Black people around me, and I had more than enough inspiration for what I could do with my hair. So during those ten transformative months, I let my hair grow. First into a teeny weeny afro, but soon I had a beautiful big afro.

So I came back to Germany with a suitcase full of hair products.

While I got lots of compliments on my long, coily hair in the USA, in Germany people often made fun of it and touched it without my consent. But my love for my hair couldn't be destroyed that easily anymore.

I watched tons of YouTube videos about natural afro hair and learned that my local afro shop has loads of products too, and that you can even make products yourself. Since then I've tried lots of different hairstyles: I regularly do twist outs, different protective styles in winter and braids every now and then.

I'm not saying that the journey to accepting my natural hair has always been easy and smooth since then. Even today I still struggle sometimes. All in all, I feel so much better since I started accepting and loving my hair as it is. It has become a big part of my identity as a Black woman in Germany. That's why I wish and hope that more Black people dare to wear their hair natural and feel just as comfortable with it as I do today.“

Winnie