We spend hours upon hours getting ready;

putting on foundation, blush and mascara and getting into the perfect sparkly, flattering dress. All of those things can seem to take forever, but none of them are nearly as time-consuming as preparing curly hair. Taming every curl and every piece of frizz into the perfect slick blowout, hours spent with a hair tool and a brush and all that effort just to look more socially acceptable, because curly hair doesn’t scream fancy or put-together.

Growing up, I never knew how to do my hair, and neither did anyone around me. My mom has straight hair, and my dad (who I got my curly hair from) hasn’t had hair for the last 30 years. All throughout elementary and middle school, I wore my hair up in a ponytail. People called my hair a “lion’s mane” and would say “those aren’t even curls, just knots and frizz!” I wished I could just have straight hair like most of the girls around me.

In my freshman year of high school, I knew I had to take matters into my own hands. I watched countless YouTube tutorials and experimented with many products. Even then, my hair was still too big. I continued getting comments like “you have to brush it out so it sticks down,” and “why is your hair so big?” That’s when I realized that my hair was not the problem; the fact that it wasn’t socially acceptable was. Now, not only do I have a routine that works for my hair, but I’ve learned to love my curls.

So why do women feel the need to straighten their hair for special occasions? Society has normalized the look of a blowout as being formal and fancy. For special events like Homecoming or Prom, I’ve noticed that almost every girl straightens their hair. Some girls say they just feel more confident, put-together or prettier with straight hair, or that they just prefer it that way.

“There is an expectation that women with curly hair should straighten their hair for more formal or professional occasions. But what is it about curly hair that indicates a lack of formality?” Eve Crandall and Haley Tomasso of the Westfield High School Hi’s Eye wrote. “If you saw the hair routines of these two curly-haired reporters, you would know there’s nothing casual about it. In reality, straight hair is no more ‘put-together’ than curly hair.”

However, some women straighten their hair for convenience. Many women go through very busy weeks without enough time to take care of their curly hair, and straightening their hair can last at least a week and is very easy to manage. But while it can be very convenient, the damage to your hair can be irreversible.

Curly girls should straighten their hair whenever they want to, and straightening is perfectly acceptable every now and then, but girls shouldn’t feel the need to straighten their hair for every special occasion; they should learn to embrace the curls instead.