You’ve just woken up and your hair, which was perfect last night, looks like it got stuck in a bush. You try to fix it, but you can’t brush it. Not because it can’t be brushed, (although that might also be the case), but because that will make your hair look even worse. If you don’t understand this struggle, that’s because you have straight hair. This article is dedicated to those girls (and boys) with long curly hair. Because to get those perfect curls, we must fight. Here are six major struggles for teens with curly hair, although I’m sure there are many, many more.

1. We can’t brush our hair when it’s dry.  The First Rule of Curly Hair is that you can only brush it when it’s wet. If our hair comes into contact with a brush, or even worse, those evil combs, they will brush out our curls, making it look like we’ve managed to attach a cloud to our head.
2. Little straw-haired peasants like to pull on our hair. Picture this: I’m sitting in class, in the first or second row, when I suddenly feel a little tug on my head, so I turn around to find there are three fellow students pulling on my hair, amazed by its ability to re-curl no matter how hard it’s pulled. I wish they could play with their own hair, but that is not an option for those less fortunate humans. And the temptation to smack their grubby little hands is unbearable. Who said my hair was a sensory tool for the public?
3. Straightening it takes up a whole day- They said blow dry it. They said it would be easy. IT WASN’T EASY.
4. It gets stuck in things way too easily. If you don’t believe me, take a shower right after playing in a playground and watch what comes out. The amount of grass you will find is enough to plant a small pasture in France.
5. You’ve wasted a lot of your (or your parents’) money trying out new hair products that will “fix your frizz.” Yeah, all of your curly-haired sisters know the struggle. You have a counter, and maybe some drawers, solely dedicated to bottles of anti-frizz spray, oils, conditioners and useless brushes that were supposed to work on curly hair. All of them were quickly abandoned through some trial and lots of error.
6. People are always asking if your hair is natural. No Janice, I wake up and curl my hair every single morning. Ugh.

But even after all of our problems, never-ending battles and struggles, we still love our precious curls, and wouldn’t give them up for anything. Curly-haired people of the world need to embrace the coiled mess that is their head. Because when our hair is rocking, we should flaunt what we’ve got!