By Edna Campos Gravenhorst –

“I’ve got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart.
Where? Down in my heart!”

This old hymn we sang in Sunday school has been playing in my heart since November 5, 2008, what a day! It was a long time coming and now it’s here, the expectations of what Americans should look like are a’changing.

The look that has tortured me the most throughout my life time, has been my hair. In 1966 my sixth grade history teacher drove it home when on a school dress up day I wore a dress with a high collar and my hair in cascading curls looking like Scarlet O’Hara in “Gone With the Wind.” I didn’t even get a glance from him. He was too busy holding the door open for one of my classmates who walked into the room looking like Shirley Temple with her bleached blond locks in ringlets. When were seated at our desks, my friend tapped me on the shoulder from behind and whispered in my ear, “Your curls are more beautiful.” I knew that, but I also knew it was no big deal after all my hair was black and naturally curly. I didn’t have to conform my hair into an unnatural state with Dippity Doo!

The next torture phase came in high school, as a freshman I wanted to look more sophisticated in the photos for the year book. I knew better than to wash my hair the night before our class was scheduled to sit for the photographer. But I did it anyway. When I looked in the mirror the next morning and saw a ‘fro worthy of an Angela Davis wig, I cried. It was time for drastic measures, “Mom set up the ironing board and set the iron on high!” Both of my sisters, who have straight hair, stood across the ironing board wrinkling their noses at the charred smell.  I was militant about conforming my kinks to look more American, while wondering how my hair was going to look like Cher’s in the late ‘60s when I had to trim the dead ends every two weeks.

The next years in high school were spent trying to find the right formula for the straightest natural looking hair. I tried sleeping with the big fat pink plastic rollers, but they left some mean creases in my hair–didn’t look too natural and the bobby pins dug into my head. By my junior year I discovered the wrapping system, where you took a tin orange juice can with both top and bottom removed, rolled the hair at the crown of your head in the thing and then wrapped the remaining hair around your head. Like today’s “Donald look” except for the tin cylinder crowning your head echoing, “You are an idiot!”

If I had spent that kind of time and energy on my chemistry class, I the National Honor Society student would have never failed the class. As it was, I had to take chemistry again and give up my dream of graduating in the top 10 percent of my class. My priority was to be accepted and to fit in. Academics were not my number one focus.

As I went out into the adult world, the hair situation was improving. The market offered better, more gentle straighteners whose scent didn’t hover over you for weeks like your grandma’s perm. In the ‘80s curling irons were introduced. They also worked well for straightening. But the best apparatus introduced in recent years has been the flat iron. Hallelujah the hair God finally answered my prayers!

Now with two flat irons, one I use daily with the other one in reserve in case iron number one malfunctions, I have decided to free myself of the expectations of others. This freedom encompasses all areas of my life, including my curly hair. I didn’t just wake up one day from this self-accepting transformation, it has taken me years of wearing high rubber boots for wading through all the “BS” expectations others have of me. I will tell you that the starting point was when I made up my own mind to take the bull by the horns and quit lying to myself. There is no such thing as natural looking straight hair when you were born to be curly.

As in all turning points there is that one incident that opens your eyes, wide enough that you are finally able to say to yourself, “Hey, I’m okay just the way I am!” I was being introduced as a new board member to a room full of what I call “mainstream Americans.” To my right was a society lady who introduced herself and told me how happy she was to have me on board. To my left sat a corporate executive. Throughout the meeting, when he was not looking at the board director at the head of the table, he sat stiffly staring straight ahead.

At the end of the meeting, Mr. Executive turned to me and asked, “Where are you from?”

I answered, “I’m from Texas.”

He just stood there puzzled and asked me again, “Where are you from?”

Again I answered, “I’m from Texas.”

I wanted to add, but didn’t, “You know George Bush country.”

For some reason I noticed his salt and pepper hair covering what would look like a hard-boiled egg head if he were bald and I made a mental note of appreciation for my olive skin.

He snapped me out of my giving thanks trance with an angry, “I’m asking you, where were you born?”

I thought damn, I am not in the habit of carrying my passport with me, where I am smiling because the day I took my photo at Walgreens was a low humidity day and the straightening iron had done its magic. The thought of Cheech in the movie, “Born in East L. A.” came to mind. How will I prove to this man that I am a U.S. citizen? Just when my blood pressure rose, I got a whiff of burning hair in my nostrils and all those years of pulling, scorching and foul-smelling chemicals came to mind. I had waited a long time.

“Sir, I was born in Texas, is that a foreign country to you?!”

Today M’ister a new day has dawned. The clothing iron is downstairs in the basement where it belongs and the flat irons hang there in case I need to strap them on as pistols.

But for today,
“I have joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart.
Where? Down in my heart!”

I share many similar views with our new president. But secretly, what has brought the most joy to my heart is that we share the same kinks.

Edna Campos Gravenhorst is a writer who lives in St. Louis.