An illustrative memoir, TEXTURED DREAMS is a reminder of the dreams had by countless youth of color in their journey to love their hair and other features of their physical appearance, while in turn, learning to love themselves.

I spent my younger years neglecting my long, unruly Dominican and Puerto Rican curls. I felt different, I felt unkept, I felt wrong. The white boys in my schools had straight, blonde, and easy-flowing hair. They looked like the white or lightly tanned men with “normal” hairstyles in movies and shows, while I looked like none of them. Even in animated features geared towards children, my classmates could easily emulate all of Disney’s princes, and cartoon characters like Fred Jones, Superman, Ben Tennyson, Jonny Bravo, Danny Phantom, Timmy Turner, and the list goes on.

For years I wanted to look like Marlon Brando with a slick back style, or at least one of Danny Zuko’s combed-over greasers wearing cool jeans, leather jackets, and GREAT gelled hair. But that was not possible for me without the use of harsh chemicals, and expensive repetitive treatments to maintain the facade.

If you want to be liked or be perceived as cool, you have to assimilate and look like people as they are portrayed in common media, and pop culture. Translation, you need to get rid of, or calm down your curls and look like a white person.

“Calm your curls Rivas, calm your curls Rivas, calm your curls Rivas.”

⸺ Christopher Rivas [“I’m An Actor of Color. My Curls Aren’t Wanted.” The New York Times, July 13, 2020]

In this piece, we are no longer fitting in. We are breaking the molds that we as people of color have been told we needed to fit into in order to be accepted. In this piece, an African American woman dreams of having long, breezy, straight hair. Though gorgeous and braided, she fantasizes about a less textured dream. In this same dream, she realizes her NATURAL TEXTURED CURLY hair is beautiful and has been this entire time.