As a curly girl, I’d like to get one thing straight. It’s 2025, and somehow, the world still acts like straight hair is the “default setting” for beauty. Flick through magazines, catch a TV advert, scroll your socials and it still seems that sleek, straightened strands basking under studio lights are the standard while natural curls are absent or shoved into a token role.
When curly hair does make it on screen, it’s often tamed, defined or styled, baring little to no resemblance to real, everyday curls.
The Professional Hair / Hollywood Myth
For decades, curly hair has been represented especially in corporate spaces as “unpolished” or “unprofessional.” Those of us with curly hair know the silent pressure to straighten it for job interviews, formal events, or pretty much anything where we want to be taken seriously.
The underlying message is clear; straight is neutral, curls are a statement and a bit of an irreverent one at that.
In films and TV, curly hair is often typecast. It’s the quirky best friend. The ‘before’ in a makeover montage. The love interest who magically becomes more desirable once her curls are straightened in the final scene.
This isn’t just vanity – it’s identity
But the issue is when kids (like me) with curly hair grow up never seeing themselves reflected in the stuff they watch and the things they see, they learn early that their natural texture is less than. The idea that beauty lies in straight strands gets internalised.
Entire generations of people were taught to fry, relax, or chemically strip their curls into submission before they were old enough to understand the damage… all because representation failed them.
It’s time to see curls in their full, unfiltered glory
Representation isn’t a token curly head. We need to see those curls from loose waves to tight coils, in every colour, length and density. Let’s see them in their natural, imperfect, humid-weather glory and let’s have them on CEOs, romantic leads, superheroes and fashion icons.
Because curls are not a trend. They’re not a costume. They’re not “brave.” They’re just hair – and they deserve the same celebration, care, and visibility that straight hair has enjoyed for decades.
