My mother insists on dry brushing for my wavy/curly, frizz-prone hair. And then threatened (when i was younger), to cut it off when I complain about the brushing. Now that I’m grown up we still have the same argument. How do I tell her that what she did during my childhood wasn’t cool?

My mother used to dry my bum-length, curly/wavy 2B hair with a round brush and hair dryer with a concentrator on the highest setting (she thought the concentrator and high heat would give me a “sleek, shiny” look- it definitely didn’t). Always used products made for fine straight hair when I had the polar opposite of that. As a kid, I wanted really long hair and loved it. What used to piss me off as a kid was that she insisted on brushing it twice a day, dry. To the point of chasing me around and sitting me down and raking the brush through my scalp as I felt the popping sensation of my hair breaking. All that caused was frizziness and dryness (my hair is super dry) which just contributed to more knotting. As you can guess i complained as the curls catch the bristles and I looked like a disgruntled squirrel every day. I would explain that the way she was brushing and drying it was causing frizziness and more knotting and the response I would get from her would usually be a hissy fit of “cut it to a manageable length!”. She would insist that I could only “keep” my hair if I brushed it like crazy until a lot of it fell out, and put it up in a scrunch ponytail 99% of the time. She did eventually cut my hair, in stages, until it was just above chest length and i was devastated and went the very next day, with my own money, to have extensions put in. Which i wore for years until it grew again.

Flash forward to today. I’m much older and follow the curly girl method, and sleep with a satin pillowcase etc. I’ve never enjoyed my natural hair this much. My mother, however, still disapproves and according to her, if my hair is not brushed until its “straightened out”, its considered “tangled and unkept” (umm, no its not, my hair is curly and that is a thing). So as you can probably see, we still argue about what she thinks my hair should be.

If my hair is curly, as it naturally is, its “tangled and unkept” to her. If my hair is open (which it usually is), she tells me that I should have it braided or tied up and then blames the fact that it is open for why I “can’t manage” my hair and then starts telling me how I should cut it.

I’m tired of this argument with her and I want to tell her that she was wrong for what she did during my childhood and how it affected (and continues to affect) me, especially threatening to cut it off. At the same time, I hate drudging up old dirt but it just feels like a drag every time she comments on me and i just bite my tongue, not knowing what to say 🙁