Elijah Hollingsworth, 21
Curl Type: 4-A
Products:
M: What do you do?
E: I am a student right now. I studied musical theater with a minor in Africana studies but I’m also a model and stylist assistant.
M: Talk to me about your hair and do you have a routine? Do you have any products you use?
E: I usually do leave-in conditioner, the LOC method. So leave-in, then oil and a curl cream. Right now I’m using Pattern Beauty, and they’re really good. I really like their leave-in. I also do mousse with that as well as a leave-in instead. I seal with black castor oil. And then I style it by braiding it and then taking it out and just picking it out.
M: How long have you had your hair like this
E: I’ve never had a haircut like I’ve trimmed it. I’ve never cut it.
M: Were you raised up that way?
E: I was. There was a period of my time where I would go to school with it braided because I wanted to know how to take care of it. And I’d get comments and bullying for my Afro being out. So I had it braided for a minute and only when I was at school. My mom would get so mad at me when I’d get home and take it out the braids.
M: Did your mom teach you how to do hair?
E: She did without knowing. I just took what she would do and did it to myself. I guess she did.
M: What specific comments did you get from your hair?
E: “Nappy headed” “matted” even though it wasn’t. All types of things. You know Thing 1 and Thing 2? I’d get called that all the time. Random little micro-aggression stuff.
M: Did you grow up in a predominantly white space?
E: I grew up in a very diverse community. So it was always the people you wouldn’t expect it to be saying stuff. I also get it. We live in this society where people perpetuate injustice. It’s put against them a lot of the time. So I think that’s a lot of it.
M: Considering your modeling, do you think that having an afro is putting you forward or behind?
E: In some cases, it’s put me forward. In some cases, it’s put me behind. It depends on what the brand is looking for. There’s been times when a brand obviously didn’t want the black boy with the afro front and center. I was doing this thing for Timberland. They had black models on set. I was the only one with an afro, the other black model who was bald didn’t even get used. I was used but then they cut my head out of all the pictures. I don’t know if it was like a black thing. I don’t know if it was a hair texture thing. And that’s just one example. I haven’t been cast for certain things or left out of casting emails and stuff because of my hair. I’ve been on castings and gotten callbacks for the casting, and fittings for the castings but never putting the show. And then seeing the show back. They’ll have Asian models with cornrows, or Asian models with Afro wigs. And it’s like, huh? What is it with this black hair on this black body? You know what I mean?
M: What’s something you wish people knew better about black hair?
E: How versatile it is. How not easy but easy it is to work with. You know what I mean? How fun it can be? I feel like there’s this negative connotation over black hair. This is just a head of hair just as it is on a white person. I feel like people discount that a lot because it’s like hair, but it’s also it has its own process just like a white person’s head of hair does you know? Yeah. I wish people knew that. It’s not as intimidating as everyone thinks it is.