Why I Love My Natural Curls, by Imaan Hammam May 15, 2015
“When I was a kid, growing up in the Netherlands, I actually didn’t know what to do with all my hair. I had so much of it, and it was hard for me to manage. Most of the time I had to ask my mother to help me out; she would brush it and style it into a bun. Around age 10 or 11, I found photos of my mom when she was younger and saw that she had an Afro. (She’s from Morocco, but she and my Egyptian father raised me in Amsterdam.) I thought, Oh, maybe I can just do that; I don’t need to brush my hair. My mom’s been my hair icon ever since.
At school, though, when I wore my hair big and natural, some of the kids would make comments about its size. They even bullied me a little, saying I looked like a sheep. It didn’t bother me—this was my mom’s hair!—but it could be kind of stressful: If I was having a bad hair day and my mom wasn’t around to help, I would sometimes be late to school. By the time high school came around, I saw that a lot of girls in my grade were wearing their hair straight. Nobody had big, groovy curls like mine. It felt kind of strange but also kind of cool; I didn’t look like anyone else. This was also when I started doing my own hair. I visited black hair salons and picked up all these products to try. That played a big part in teaching me what worked and what didn’t. For instance, gel is the worst thing for my hair—it makes it very stiff and hard. And by process of elimination, I found my best product: Aunt Jackie’s Curl La La Defining Curl Custard [$10, naturallycurly.com]. It softens and defines my curls. I just put a bit of it into damp, towel-dried hair, let hair air-dry for 30 minutes, and then diffuse it with a blow-dryer—this makes it even curlier and bigger, which I like. When I’m having a really awkward hair day, I’ll put argan oil all over like a mask, leave it in for an hour, then wash it out and comb through. I’ve discovered that less is more; I don’t use that much stuff.
I first started modeling five years ago, and the stylists would try different things with my hair, but ultimately it would always get straightened. It wasn’t until I did a shoot with Vogue last year that I got to wear my natural hair. I think it opened people’s eyes: Like, “Maybe we don’t have to spend three hours straightening her hair; we can just leave it like this.”
I admit that I like my hair straight as well: With it, I feel older, even sexier. It’s like I’m telling a story about someone else. But when my hair is big, I feel super-confident and carefree and my personality comes through; it actually makes modeling easier. A lot of photographers love my natural hair too, and the majority of my recent shoots, like the Givenchy campaign, were with my curls. Something about that just feels really good—like the real me.
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