Dove Love Your Hair Campaign

Throughout this campaign, I continue my own conversation as a mom with my daughter on being positive about her hair. Dove™is on a mission to empower moms to be leaders in their daughter’s hair confidence journey by teaching them to love their own. Dove Hair will be hosting a website where people can personalize their mother/daughter photo with creative text and images for sharing on their social networks.

The first time my baby girl came to me and asked me why she had “puffy” hair and not long, straight hair like her friend Jaliah, I didn’t know what to answer. I hadn’t planned on being asked that question so soon, she was only six years old…But she could already tell in her little beautiful mind, that the world could be different depending on whether your hair was “puffy” or pin straight…

In the next few minutes, I pondered all kinds of answers I could give her. Or how I could possibly change the topic and make her forget about it all…Then I remembered how important my own hair journey, as a Black African woman, had been, and in many respects,  still was.

From those evenings back in the day when my mother would heat up the hot comb on the stove and mistakenly burn the edges of my ears trying to straighten my curly hair. To those day-long appointments at the local hair salon, waiting in line to get my hair relaxed, straightened and flat-ironed to achieve that coveted pin-straight look. To finally, that fateful day when, three months pregnant with my second baby, I left a crowded hair salon and gave up on ever trying to change the texture of my hair again. In between these, I had given birth to a beautiful baby girl with coarse, wildly curly hair, and if I wanted her to be true to the reflection she saw in the mirror, I had to be true to my own reflection…

What is beautiful hair? That’s the question so many women and young girls ask themselves daily. And that ‘s the question society has been trying to impose answers to women for so long…Dove™found that 8 in 10 women feel pressured to wear their hair a certain way. Yet, 82% of girls learn about caring for themselves from their mothers.Which also means that, as moms, we can help make a difference. We can show our daughters to love their hair, love themselves, and feel confident about the true, authentic image they project to the world…

There’s something about letting go of the need to look a certain way that replaces the need to be accepted, with the simple reality of accepting yourself. As is. Although the start of my natural transition was a bit like jumping off a cliff without a parachute, not knowing what to do with this newfound hair freedom that threatened to hijack everything I knew about society’s norms and my own, it was also a great exercise in self-discovery…

I quickly discovered that wearing my own hair curly, wild and free made me feel at home, like my best self. Those rebellious waves coming to the surface felt like a comfortable pair of slippers I had never taken off. So when I saw the same rebellious, stubborn waves popping on my baby’s full head of “puffy”, wild hair, I felt home. And I wanted her to feel home in her own hair too…Home in her own wild kinks and coils and curls. Home in who she was and was to become…I wanted her to learn the simple truths that it took me a few decades to learn, the ease to be home in your own hair…

So when that day she asked me about her “puffy” hair, and I didn’t know what to answer at first, I simply took a deep breath and remembered. I remembered why I decided to feel at home in my own hair. And how she walked me home without even knowing it…And I decided to tell her, that day and every day after that, whether she asks or not…

I’m still deciding, day after day, to tell her how beautiful her kinks and coils and crazy curls are. How she inspired me to love my own kinks and coils, just because of who she was. And how we’re all beautiful in our own, special, unique, free way…And that’s why I’m so excited to be part of the Dove™Love Your Hair campaign, to share my journey and tell my baby why I care with this custom Dove™animated message.

That’s why I encourage myself as a mom, and I’m encouraging you as a mom as well, to start, continue, deepen the conversation with your daughter(s) about their own hair. To instill in them the confidence we sometimes find so hard to instill in ourselves. And to have fun in the process…

Tell her why you love her hair. Make it a memorable experience by going to the Dove™  website HERE, and creating your own Dove™ Love Your Hair animated message with your baby.

How are you encouraging your daughter to love her own hair and be confident in who she is?

Love,

The Corporate Sis.

Disclosure: This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Dove™.