Women are not their hair

It has finally been done: a beauty queen who represents someone like me.

New Miss SA Zozibini Tunzi has won my heart as an African woman whose hair has not been chemically treated; that has no extensions to it.

She may be half my size, but Tunzi represents my crowning glory. She is the proof in the pudding: beauty is not uniform, it is not limited to magazine looks.

She is everything women like Ataui Deng, Ajak Deng, Grace Bol and Thando Hopa represent: a beauty who refused to conform to a beauty standard that did not represent them.

For years we have shouted: we are not our hair!

And because we did not fit a certain mould, we were not considered smart because we were choosing to stand against the beauty standards set for us.

We know beauty is in the eye of the beholder but the African child with natural locks is as beautiful as the African child sporting Brazilian hair.

Finally, we can define our own beauty.

Now it’s just the battle to use English left…

My son responds to “sleep baby” as opposed to “robala nana.” Yes, I can see how “we have lost the plot and caused our people great detriment”. But there should be choices on who you want to be. An English speaker with natural African hair? Why can’t we be both?

Why is our society ever so fixated with pigeon-holing? Live and let live.

My mother refused to straighten my hair. When my cousin’s hair was blowing in the wind, my tough-as-nails hair refused to move – and I loved it.

Yet, society is ready to lynch me should I ever refuse to straighten my daughter’s hair to give her a false sense of beauty. Why can she not own who she is?

While hair is no measurement for intelligence, the natural look is no measurement for how African one truly is.

Tunzi’s win has been dumbed down to a conversation about her hair.

She carried herself with grace and her answers were dripping with intellect – but her hair dared to be different.

Yes, we are different, but deserve to be taken seriously.

Kekeletso Nakeli-Dhliwayo.

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