Haven’t curly haired girls suffered enough? We already spend more time and money on shampoos. We already take aesthetic risks every time we step out on a humid day. Curly hair takes days of scheduling, it takes hours to dry. There’s no last-minute hack for curls. And even when we get everything right, the spirals trap earphones, barrettes and oh, there’s that earring that’s been missing since Tuesday!

What makes matters worse is that films and TV shows still depict curly hair as unprofessional, unsexy, at best unkempt, at worst uncivilised. All the shampoo ads are for straight, shiny hair. Curls are inevitably the before section of a makeover montage – Vivian had them and lost them in Pretty Woman (1990). Mia gave hers up for a chance at royalty in The Princess Diaries (2001). Clearly, curls belong on ugly ducklings, not swans.

Even Hermione, from the Harry Potter movies subtly goes from bushy haired to smooth locked, without explanation (but the unhinged villain Bellatrix Lestrange gets to keep her unruly coils). In Queen (2013) Kangana Ranaut’s natural curls are fully straight by the end of the movie, after she’s been through her journey of discovery. Look at news channels. How many curly-haired anchors do you see?

Who decided that hair texture was a mark of character? And where does that leave curly girls in real life? Salons don’t know. Stylists inevitably suggest some kind of straightening treatment rather than style curls as they are. Or, if they’re feeling particularly mutinous, will just run a paddle brush through hair, detangling it but frizzing it up for the rest of the day.

Our parents generation won the first battle, when they realised that a richer conditioner could tame the flames. Our older sisters slipped us serums that calmed fly-aways without weighing down each curl. But it’s TikTok, really that’s changing the game now. Young women from around the world are breaking down how curly a single strand can get (2B and 2C are not pencils, people!) and what to do about it. Women and men know the difference between springy and bouncy. They’re flipping their wet heads forward after a shower, grabbling the leave-in formulas and scrunching, to get each lock to dry out in perfect coils. No one’s using a brush on dry hair, praise Medusa!

Meanwhile, there’s curly representation on TV. Hello Zendaya, you’ve already done more than you know. We’re watching you, Taapsee Pannu, Mithila Palkar, Jim Sarbh, and Timothee Chalamet. And we’re taking notes.

Oddly enough, animated films have the best curly icons. Both Maui and Moana rocked their natural waves in the 2016 Disney movie Moana. Brave’s Merida did it in 2012 with her beautiful ginger curls. Hair Love (2019), an animated short film about a father trying to do his daughter’s hair for the first time, won an Oscar.

And in another win, Amir Manuel Mendez, a 14-year-old boy from California, set the Guinness World Record last year for the largest afro on a living male. His afro has a circumference of 226 cm and he’s proud of every bit of it. We need more heroes like this.

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