In 2000, I walked out of my then-newsroom with dark, straight, chin-length hair and returned an hour later nearly bald. The reactions were … interesting. I was asked if I was now gay. No. Or if I had cancer. No again. Also, that’s not how chemotherapy-related hair loss works.

My motivation for having my hairdresser snip and shave all but an inch or so of my hair — what Black women call “the big chop” — was pretty straight-forward. A lifetime of straightening my natural, tightly-textured African American hair with heat, products and chemicals had left it limp, damaged and broken. It was not cute.

But that’s what I’d been told Black women and girls had to do to look professional and polished. A friend says her stylists told her it was literally bad for her hair not to have regular relaxers. I didn’t question any of it until my poor, besieged hair decided it wasn’t playing with me any more, broke off at the nape of my neck and refused to grow in that spot anymore, like a spotty Black Chia Pet. After years of being told I had to change my hair to just exist in society, I felt like I was finally meeting me.

Just letting it grow the way it does naturally out of my noggin shouldn’t be a big deal. But until two years ago, here in the state of my birth, it could have gotten me fired. The Maryland version of the CROWN Act (Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair), which went into effect in October 2020, prohibits employment discrimination based on hair texture or hairstyles traditionally associated with African American hair. That means that you can’t legally be dismissed, demoted or reprimanded for wearing locks, twists or an Afro, something that hasn’t historically been the case.

If you choose to straighten your hair, because of convenience or because you simply like the way it looks, I love that for you. It just shouldn’t be required to feel beautiful. Or pay rent.

The late ’80s and ’90s was a maze of finger waves, crimps and madness. For the first two days of getting my hair done, it looked pretty good, but after that it drooped like a Charlie Brown Christmas tree. I just wanted to literally cut all that off and start over, a practical move born of frustration and curling irons.

In the 22 years since the chop, that simple act of practicality has become something deeper. As my hair grew back, I would breathlessly bring my hand to my head and feel the deeply-woven coils rise to meet my fingers and breathe deeply. Loving that sensation — and not taking it as a sign that it was time to run off to Rite Aid for another box of relaxer — felt revolutionary.

As if that wasn’t enough reason to be able to just live with your hair the way it is, a disturbing new report that was commissioned in connection with the National Institutes of Health suggests that chemically straightening our hair as Black women could be literally killing us. Women who use those chemicals more than four times a year — which Black women are more likely to do — were over twice as likely to develop uterine cancer. I used to get touch-ups, or reapplications of my relaxer, every four to six weeks. There are 52 weeks in a year. That’s deadly math.

But for years, before this legislation, that’s the risk we felt we had to take. Just do a quick Google search and you’ll find cases of news anchors, military personnel and even Victoria’s Secret models whose careers have been threatened or ended for wearing their hair natural and not straightening it or covering it with a wig or weave. Almost 20 years ago, I was told that someone at a television station I did weekly segments for wondered out loud if I might straighten my hair on those days so that my then-blonde, high coils didn’t interfere with the green screen.

I declined, and no one ever said anything else about it. Now there are so many Black anchors with natural hair locally and nationally that I guess everyone has figured that green screen thing out. But I don’t believe that person knew what they were asking, not just in the amount of work and damage I’d have to do, but in asking me to present as anyone else than the authentic me. I actually big chopped a second time in 2021, right before I turned 50 and after a blonde dye job and bad blowout. And I’m meeting this Leslie all over again.

Traditionally, if our hair didn’t meet the European standard of beauty — meaning straight — it was called everything from dirty to unprofessional to political. That last description is particularly loaded, because wearing big, glistening Afros have indeed been a political act and expression of cultural defiance.

They’re seen that way sometimes even unintentionally, and we’re not talking about back in the ancient day. In 2007, a Glamour magazine editor presented Afros and locks as “political” and, therefore, a classic Glamour magazine “Don’t.” That way of thinking isn’t a mistake. Consider the words commonly used to describe the practice of altering hair to make it societally presentable: taming curls, making locks more manageable, taking control.

When measured against the history of policing Black bodies and hair, those words aren’t benign. They’re about guarding against the threat that we might love our hair the way it is, and no longer believe that there’s something wrong with who we are. Because if we believe we are beautiful as we are, we will find strength in that beauty.

And there’s your revolution.

One of the best things about the CROWN Act is that it came at a time when fewer women needed to be convinced of the beauty of their hair, no matter what they decide to do with it. Just looking around The Baltimore Banner newsroom reveals all manner of kinks, coils, locks and flowing straight ‘dos. There’s so much freedom to be whatever you’ve decided to be that day, and that’s beautiful.

They shouldn’t have had to pass a law to ensure that freedom. But I’m glad they did.

leslie.streeter@thebaltimorebanner.com