Can I share a secret?
I wrote an article awhile back about the high-maintenance travel Olympics. In it, I lamented about how forcing ourselves to look our 5-star best at all times on vacation holds us back from being fully present in a new place. However, it me. As I wrote in the essay, I, too, feel the pressure at times to show up in new cities I’ve never been to as an idealized version of myself.
Which brings me to today’s confession: I’ve never worn my natural hair while travelling abroad (*ducks from tomato*).
I’ve been part of the “natural hair community” since 2008, a community that seems to be in shambles at the moment, but I digress. In trying to learn how to care for my hair, I stumbled on the now defunct Black Hair Media (BHM) forums. Those ladies were like mad scientists—concocting recipes and slanging around terms I had never heard of, like “the greenhouse method,” “kitchentician,” and “TWA.” A whole new world opened up before me, and these anonymous women became like my big internet sisters, lighting the way and encouraging me to go natural way before it was cool.
Despite being an OG to the game, I haven’t brought myself to wear my natural hair while out in these foreign streets.
On a practical level, my wash day routine is a multi-hour process with quite a few products involved. The thought of trying my luck with the beauty haters at TSA and then lugging everything to some foreign country sounds like work I don’t want to do. And if I hop into a body of water, whether one full of chlorine or seaweed or fish poop, guess what’s going to be waiting for me back at the hotel: wash day. Sue me if I don’t want to wash my hair on vacation—aren’t we here to relax?
But hiding behind the door of practicality was another door. A tiny one hiding insecurity behind it. A small part of me still held onto the belief that to be my most “poppin” self on vacation—full of IG-worthy photos, swimming as free as Ariel, and, when I was single, trying to catch the eyes of hot strangers—I needed to be in a fresh, “done” hairstyle. Those damn respectability politics.
As a Black woman traveling in the world in the early 2000s, being constantly perceived due to the shade of my skin was already enough reason to want to show up as “put together” as possible. I just wanted to blend in, an impossible task. I’ll wear my natural hair to work, on a date, or to speak on stages, but while travelling? That’s a leap I wasn’t quite ready to make.
Until my recent trip to Mexico City.
I had just gotten my first-ever silk press, and I planned to rock a fresh set of kinky straight clip-ins I got earlier in the year from Nigeria.
But on day one of the trip, we were scheduled to go to the Tolantongo pools (a must-do!). I’d been lusting over the idea of being my most fake-influencer-baddie-self in these pools since I learned about them in 2021 while living in Mexico. It’s an excursion in itself to get there (about a four-hour drive from the city center), but I recommend going with the tour guides that pick you up around 4 AM so you can beat the crowds. An experience like this in the States would cost hundreds of dollars and be reserved solely for the wealthy. But here in Mexico, locals of all kinds get to enjoy the vibes.
I’ll just wrap my hair in a scarf and not put my head in, or so I thought. Here I was thinking we were just going to be bougie and hop in and out of these lush hot springs from the waist down and have a relaxing day. But next thing I know, our tour guide was ringing the alarm, “VAMONOS!! DO YOU KNOW YOU HAVE 30 MINS?!”
Apparently there was a second part of the tour—the waterfall. When the influencers posted those pools on IG, not one of them mentioned a waterfall, let alone waterfalls, plural! Mind you, this wasn’t a waterfall that we were just going to look at from afar, no. We had to swim under said waterfall into a cave, squeeze through a tiny, jagged, rock-lined crevice, and cross over seaweed-covered boulders while attempting not to slip, all while dodging bats that were hanging out at the top of the cave like the hyenas in The Lion King and trying not to get our edges snatched. And for a little extra razzle dazzle, the strong water currents were pushing us against our will, making sure there was no turning back.
We emerged from our Indiana Jones underwater adventure fully drenched and gasping for air. I lightly tapped my head to feel what I already knew. Damn. Waterfall: 1, Silk press: 0. My kinks started talking shit, "Girl, cute try.” The silk press lasted less than 12 hours, and we had 5 more days of the trip to go.
I now had to do an entire wash day and get all the clay, seaweed, and whatever else the Mayan ancestors infused in that water out of my curls.
The hotel just happened to have organic conditioner and shampoo, and luckily there was a Walmart across the street. I went and grabbed what looked like a leave-in conditioner (“acondicionador??”) and went to work. The plan was to wash my hair, blow it out, and then flat iron it so I could proceed with my clip-in dreams.
But after what felt like forever to blow it out, it was time to head to dinner. Time was up—I had to improvise. I have to just rock it natural. I called an audible and started prepping my tried and true: a braid-out. I used mousse to set it, then blow-dried it a bit more so they could set faster, and voila! I took them out, and my hair was literally the most light, refreshed, and airy it’s ever been!
That braid-out had juju in it because in under an hour it completely unshackled me from years of avoidance. For the rest of the trip, I stopped worrying about what my hair was doing. I let her flow, and I flowed with her. From day to day, she flourished, going from full of volume and bouncy to more shrunken and tightly coiled to my head. I embraced all of it. She told me to stop worrying about her because she’s doing her own thing regardless. I honored her wishes.
From half-up, half-down fros to pigtails to a TWA in all its shrunken glory—the setback forced me to be creative and just own it.
Black hair is more than personal. And while I thought I loved my natural hair, that love can’t just exist within the comfort of home—the proverbial vacuum. If I don’t feel free to show up in unfamiliar places exactly as I am, then how deep does that love really go? Even though I claimed to reject beauty standards, in practice, I was still playing by their rules.
But thanks to a waterfall in Mexico, not anymore.
This is a beautiful adventurous story. You are brave. There's no way I'd have gone to that tunnel.
What a hilarious and heartwarming read. As a natural myself, I see taking care of my hair as an extension of taking care of myself. But looks like you need to get a swimming cap next time loool