I Found Out My Friends Were My Biggest Haters
The road to self-love is one hell of a ride.
One thing that I have learned through my personal journey is that my self-love has to do with me and nobody else. Some people, even “friends," who only see the finished product may never know or understand the journey it took to get to a place where I love myself.
A few months ago, a friend of mine who I met through work invited me to come with her on a trip with two of her girlfriends. I was desperately wanting to get away so I jumped at the opportunity. However, three days into the trip, I experienced a rude awakening where I came across a conversation on her phone as I was sending group photos from her phone to my number. My name popped up at the top of the screen from another co-worker (God's intervention) and I found a conversation where she was talking about me behind my back.
As I read the conversation, I felt my 24-year-old body flashback to middle school, a time where I often found myself in the middle of catty situations. Yet, this time I was dealing with a 28- and 31-year-old. Two women I somewhat looked up to at my job and spent happy hours over drinks and talking about life, love, and all in between. Two people I naively trusted and I felt blind-sighted by it all.
In the conversation, I saw a screenshot of a photo that I posted to my Instagram the day before of me in a bikini on the beach and under I saw mean comments like, “Killing me softly." As I continued to read the conversation, I instantly thought to hours earlier when I asked my friend to take a photo of me, she said in a snarky tone, “No, you have enough photos of yourself." I took her response as her sarcasm and did not think twice about it. Yet, at that moment I connected the dots and realized,
“Damn this girl is hating on me or hates the fact that I post selfies of myself? What? Isn't this what Instagram is for? Two, this girl that I consider a friend is smiling in my face, but talking about me behind my back while we're on vacation and sharing a room together!
I felt angry, hurt, and betrayed. At first, I did not want to confront her about it. Yet, I figured that if I didn't say anything, it probably eat me alive, cause me to act resentfully, and ruin my trip so I gathered the courage to pull her aside and tell her everything I saw and ask her what is going on. As I spoke I had to fight back tears because I felt vulnerable and hurt, especially being in another country, which was suppose to be a fun girl's trip. She ended up apologizing and spent the rest of the trip acting really nice to me, which part of me knew she was only acting this way because she had been caught. I don't believe in burning bridges so I decided to remain cordial and respectful, but I knew from then on that I could not trust her and had to distance myself.
Yet, the more I thought about it the situation, the more angry I felt internally. I wanted to scream:
“So what if I take selfies and post my model photos? So what if I think I am cute? Do you know how many years it took for me to get here? How much time it took for myself to look in the mirror and not hate myself. To actually be in this place where I am okay being me. I am happy being me. How dare you! How dare you talk shit about me! You don't know what I been through!"
Honestly she did not. I've spent majority of my childhood feeling insecure, never physically beautiful, or good enough. I was always made fun of for being tall, skinny, lanky and not having any of the features “black girls are suppose to have" (big booty and boobs) as seen on music videos and throughout the media. I had extremely low self esteem and man it took so much internal work for me to be here. To be in a place where I unapologetically love myself within and without. To not compare myself or want to be anyone else.
To understand that another woman's beauty does not take away from my own. At 24, I can honestly say that I love myself inside and out.
Yet, as I dove deeper into my thoughts and pass my ego trip, I heard Don Miguel Ruiz's words from the Four Agreements ring in my head, “Don't take anything personally."
[Tweet "Most of the things that people do to us have nothing to do with us, but more about them."]
Often we forget that most of the things that people do to us have nothing to do with us, but more about them. Your confidence, self-esteem, and happiness may cause other people to feel uncomfortable because they are not happy or confident in themselves. For all I know, my “friend" may be dealing with her own personal issues. Maybe both women are not happy with themselves. Whatever the reasons for their actions towards me, I probably will never know.
Yet nothing they can say or do will ever take away from this light of mine that I have found within myself. I have definitely learned a lesson about being more mindful about who I go on trips with and more importantly, watching who I call my friends, especially outside of my "day-one" circle of true friends.
ItGirl 100 Honors Black Women Who Create Culture & Put On For Their Cities
As they say, create the change you want to see in this world, besties. That’s why xoNecole linked up with Hyundai for the inaugural ItGirl 100 List, a celebration of 100 Genzennial women who aren’t afraid to pull up their own seats to the table. Across regions and industries, these women embody the essence of discovering self-value through purpose, honey! They're fierce, they’re ultra-creative, and we know they make their cities proud.
VIEW THE FULL ITGIRL 100 LIST HERE.
Don’t forget to also check out the ItGirl Directory, featuring 50 Black-woman-owned marketing and branding agencies, photographers and videographers, publicists, and more.
THE ITGIRL MEMO
I. An ItGirl puts on for her city and masters her self-worth through purpose.
II. An ItGirl celebrates all the things that make her unique.
III. An ItGirl empowers others to become the best versions of themselves.
IV. An ItGirl leads by example, inspiring others through her actions and integrity.
V. An ItGirl paves the way for authenticity and diversity in all aspects of life.
VI. An ItGirl uses the power of her voice to advocate for positive change in the world.
Let’s make things inbox official! Sign up for the xoNecole newsletter for daily love, wellness, career, and exclusive content delivered straight to your inbox.
It’s been nearly twenty years since India.Arie’s crown anthem, “I am not my hair,” gave Black women an affirmation to live by. What followed was a natural hair revolution that birthed a new level of self-love and acceptance. Concerns around how to better care for our hair birthed an entire new generation of entrepreneurs who benefitted from the power of the Black dollar. Retailers made room for product lines made for us, by us, on their shelves, and we further affirmed that though our hair doesn’t define us, it is part of our unique self-expression.
Today, that movement has turned into a wig uprising where Black women are able to experiment with colors, styles, and more without causing irreparable damage to our hair. It could even be said that we’ve arrived at a new level of acceptance: one that does not equate love of oneself to one’s willingness or lack thereof to wear her hair the way others deem acceptable. Not even other people who look like us.
However, as with Blackness itself, the issue of Black women’s hair is layered.
On the surface, it’s nothing more than a matter of personal preference. However, in a deeper dive, issues of texture, curl pattern, and of course, proximity to social acceptance, as well as other runoff streams from the waters of racism and patriarchy, rear their heads. The natural hair movement, though a wide-reaching and liberating community builder, also gave way to colorism and often upheld mainstream beauty standards.
Sometimes, favoring lighter-skinned influencers/creators with very specific hair textures, the white gaze leaked into our safe space and forced us to reckon with it. Accurate representations of natural hair in various states of being—undefined curls, kinks, and unlaid edges—are still absent from brand marketing. Protective styles, though intended to provide breaks from styling for our sensitive hair, have become a mask to help our hair be more palatable. A figurative straddle of the fence in order to appease the comfort of others in the face of our hair’s power.
And then there’s the issue of length.
Giphy
As a woman who has spent much of the last decade voluntarily wearing her hair in many variations of short hairstyles, from a pixie cut to a curly fro and a sleek bob, what I’ve gleaned throughout the years is that there is a glaring difference between how I am treated when wearing my hair short than when I opt for weaves, extensions or even grow it out slightly longer than my chin.
The differential treatment comes from women and men alike and spans professional and personal settings, including friends, coworkers, and industry peers.
What has become abundantly clear is that long hair is often conflated with beauty, softness, and any number of other words we relate to femininity in a way that short hair is not. That perceived marker of the essence of womanhood shows up in how I am received, communicated with, and complimented.
Even more so than texture, length has a way of deciding who among us is deserving of our attention, affection, and adoration. Whether naturally grown or proudly bought, the commentary around someone’s look or image greatly shifts when “inches” are present.
When it comes to long hair, we really, really do care.
In an effort to understand whether I had simply been misinterpreting the energy around my hair, I decided to take my findings to social media. I began with two side-by-side photos of myself. In both pictures, my hair is straightened; however, in one, I am wearing my signature pixie cut, and in the other, I am wearing extensions.
I posited that treatment based on hair length is a real thing, and what followed was confirmation that I was not alone in my feelings. “Long hair, like light skin, button noses, and being thin are all forms of social capital,” one user commented. “Some Black women enforce the status quo too, why wouldn’t we?”
Courtesy
This also brought to mind the many times celebrity women (like most recently Beyoncé's Cécred hair tutorial) have done big reveals of their own natural tresses in an attempt to silence any doubt that Black women are able to grow their hair beyond a certain length. Of course, we all know that to be true, so why do we still feel the need to prove it so?
The responses continued to pour in from women of all skin tones, who felt that hair length played a role in people’s treatment of them. “When I have short hair I always feel like people don’t treat me like a woman, they treat me like a kid,” another user commented. “When my hair is long I get a lot more respect for some reason.”
From revelations about feeling invisible to admitted shifts in their own perceived beauty, Black woman after Black woman poured out her experience as it relates to hair length. Though affirmed by their shared realities, knowing that reactions to something so trivial have become yet another hair battle for Black women to fight was disheartening. Though we continue to defy gravity and push the bounds of imagination and creativity by way of our strands, will it always be in response to the idea that we are, somehow, falling short?
Unlike more obvious instances of hair discrimination, the glorification of longer length is sneakier in its connection to Eurocentric beauty standards. Hair commercials, beauty ads, and even hip-hop music have long celebrated the idea of gloriously long tresses while holding onto the ignorant notion that it is inaccessible for Black women.
Even as we continue to fight to prove our hair professional, elegant, and worthy in its natural state to the world at large, we’ve also adopted harmful value markers of our own as a community. It’s evident in how we talk about who has the right to start a haircare line and which influencers we easily platform. It’s evident in the language we use to identify those with long hair versus short hair. And it’s painfully obvious in how we treat one another.
It makes me wonder if India.Arie’s brave rallying cry, almost two decades old in its existence, will ever actually hold true for us. Or will we just continue to invent new ways to uphold the harmful status quo?
Let’s make things inbox official! Sign up for the xoNecole newsletter for love, wellness, career, and exclusive content delivered straight to your inbox.
Feature image by Willie B. Thomas/ Getty Images