This is NPR's Life Kit and I'm Vanessa Hinty, the show's intern.

When I think about myself and the other black woman in my family, straightening our hair

is all we've known.

That's all I was taught and until I went natural two and a half years ago, I accepted that

as a fact of life.

I often asked why it was protocol to have my hair.

Everyone's hair straightened all the time.

The response was usually vague, but the sentiment was all the same to me.

My natural hair wasn't enough.

And of course, we softened the message.

We didn't necessarily have our parents say to us, your hair is so ugly.

We both said, our parents said, it's just more manageable this way.

Our mothers loved us and they weren't thinking we were ugly.

But why does there always have to be a butt?

That was racing culture journalist Lori Tharves.

She and I have a shared experience.

My mom never explicitly said bad things about my hair, but I've always lingered on the

word manageable.

On why manageable was the gold standard that my natural hair couldn't meet?

Because the way everyone talked about it, it seemed like there was nothing natural or

acceptable about my hair at all.

Really and truly, the natural hair term, it's actually a response to the fact that we've

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