By Pauline Odhiambo
She grew up as the girl on the Dark and Lovely "Beautiful Beginnings Relaxer" box, her shy smile complementing a head of straight kinky hair with not a strand out of place.
In hair salons around the world, little girls would point at her picture on the box, saying they wanted their hair done just like hers.
Twenty-one years later, Natalie Githu's face is still on the box, although she now wears her hair natural, and has faced discrimination because of it.
"I did the ad for Dark and Lovely when I was around four years old; so, I didn't really know anything about hair care. But I can say that my hair was very healthy because my mum was in the hair care business.” Natalie, now 25, tells TRT Afrika. “And that's how I got the gig.”
"People always ask me if that's actually my hair on the box. They wonder if I had hair extensions, or a wig on my head for that shoot. I tell them that it's 100 percent my hair – that's just how healthy it was!"
Natalie's parents are Kenyan, but she was born in South Africa's Johannesburg, where she worked as a model for nearly 15 years. Her mother would accompany her to most shoots as her chaperone-cum-hairstylist.
Stereotypes and straighteners
The product Natalie endorsed was among the company's bestsellers in the continent for a reason. Afro-textured hair continues to be stereotyped and stigmatised around the world, constantly fueling the market for straighteners.
Chemical relaxers are products used to straighten tight curls and coils in the hair and are often a great solution for people with frizzy hair. But relaxers sometimes have side-effects such as stinging, burning and, in some cases, hair loss. While many now opt for more natural hair straightening methods, relaxers remain in demand.
According to the Harvard Business Review, even in places where there are safeguards against race-based hair discrimination, black women bear the brunt when it comes to hair bias.
This was also the reality for Natalie, who often straightened her hair not only for modelling, but also to comply with the strict hair rules in school.
"I was in a predominantly white girls' school and, in our rule book, your hair had to be in a ponytail or a ballet bun. No afros were allowed at the time," she recounts.
This meant that girls who wanted to wear their hair in the school-approved styles often used chemical relaxers to achieve the look. "Growing up, I never really thought of my hair as a form of identity until high school when I started paying attention to how black hair was perceived in certain spaces," says Natalie.
She remembers constantly comparing herself to her fellow Caucasian classmates, who could just tie their hair up for swimming, and didn't need to grease their scalp or take recourse to any protective hairstyle. "I, on the other hand, would often wear my hair in braids because that was the easiest style to maintain for me."
Even the braided hairstyles available to black girls were limited.
"White girls could dye their hair in any colour, but we weren't allowed to braid ours in any colour other than black, which was quite unfair," rues Natalie.
She remembers an instance of a white schoolmate taunting her for wearing a headband on her braids.
"I had my braids in for a bit too long; so, my natural hair growth was starting to show. Us black students, we would sometimes wear a headband to hide the new growth so that our braided hair would still look neat for school," she recalls.
“One day, I had my headband on and one of the white girls said, ‘I just don’t understand why black girls wear hairbands; it's not like you have a hairline to keep intact'."
Natalie says she didn't bother to "dignify her comment with a response because it was blatantly racist".
Campus campaign
In August 2016, 13-year-old Zulaikha Patel and her schoolmates at Pretoria Girls' High School in South Africa began a campaign against racist hair policies at their formerly all-white school.
Their protest helped ignite a global conversation around the issue of hair discrimination in South African schools, while also helping to put the global spotlight on a matter that many black people worldwide experienced often but hadn't spoken about it.
"By Grade 11, many girls in my school were wearing their hair afros proudly because the Pretoria girls had ignited a conversation about black hairstyles," says Natalie.
Personally, she still felt confined to a modelling industry that often required her to show up at shoots with her hair prepped in a way that made it difficult to style.
"Back then, nine out of 10 models were white; so, one was often required to show up with the hair washed and wet. That's fine for a white model but it's hard for a black person because your hair will get frizzy and matted and, therefore, harder to style — especially if the stylist has no experience working with black hair."
Natalie goes natural
In 2018, Natalie made the decision to completely stop chemically straightening her hair.
"I didn't stop relaxing my hair because I hated relaxers. I was very fortunate to have gone to stylists who knew how to properly relax black hair. I just felt that there was no need to relax my hair since I had made up my mind to just do braids. Plus, I also felt uniquely beautiful with my braids," she explains.
Although being unique and standing out is promoted in the modelling industry, Natalie, who had up to that point worn wigs and weaves for jobs, was worried that the modelling agency she was contracted to at the time wouldn't approve of her new look.
"But having my hair in braids turned out to be the best thing ever because I ended up booking more gigs because of my braids," says Natalie, who has modelled for SA Fashion Week and other brands.
"I even ended up doing an advert in France, and they were very welcoming of my braided hairstyle. I suspect they hired me because my hair was in braids; so, it worked out in my favour."
Natalie has also become adept behind the camera, and is set to graduate in film studies from the University of Cape Town.
"It's been a very eventful life in modelling, but I now prefer to be behind the camera because I am very intrigued by visual storytelling. I would still like to be part of the modelling industry, albeit behind the camera," she says.
"I love the versatility of our black hair – it is empowering and continuously beautiful, whether you wear it natural or relaxed. It's more than just hair because millions of women and girls worldwide can relate to one another, based on the beauty of their hair," she adds.
