My Curly Hair Conundrum, Part II + A Tribute to Ayesha Malik

Fast-forward again to late 2019. This subject is still painful for me, so I will be brief. I’d been living in my parents’ house for two years, having moved back to Texas in the aftermath of the implosion of an abusive relationship. Without a therapist I fell into some pretty bad habits, including staying up quite late strolling about the Internet. And I’m glad I did, or I wouldn’t have seen news that the DevaCurl products — on which I’d spent a decade of my life and tens of thousands of dollars — were causing intensive damage to curly haired folks everywhere. I read, in shock, about the mass hair loss, alopecia, depression, migraines, and other medical crises suffered by those using DevaCurl. Suddenly, I too had an answer as to why my own hair seemed to be thinning. I’d chalked it up to the stresses of the abusive relationship, and then becoming a teacher — I hadn’t realized that like every other curly-haired Deva user, I’d been blaming myself when the products themselves were to blame. The shit icing on the shit cake was my guilt, since my boyfriend (let’s call him David) has very wavy, almost curly hair, and I’d gotten him to use DevaCurl products. His hair had begun falling out too.

It wasn’t just the physical loss of my hair that wounded me. How could the very people who taught me to value my curls be the ones to destroy them? How could they betray my trust — both emotional and financial — in their shampoos, conditioners, ethos, styling products? Eva and I occasionally texted each other, though I had…