Tehila Okagbue

“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” —Audre Lorde My hair is the first historian I knew. It holds records of Saturday evenings in front of the long wooden mirror in our Lagos home, the tug of small-tooth combs, the sting of silence when a relaxer burn was dismissed as “beauty pain,” and all the tiny compromises that did not seem like surrender until I learned they were.

From our work cubicles and boardrooms to the halls of Hollywood — Black women leaders chafe under the unspoken rule to expect and accept less My mother once shared how a long-overdue promotion was finally handed to her in a crisis — a classic example of the glass cliff effect. Even after she rose to the challenge, she was expected to remain humble and grateful for an opportunity she had more than earned. For many Black women, hard work is more than just a value.

Illustration by Shalom Ojo / THE REPUBLIC. Illustration by Shalom Ojo / THE REPUBLIC. Though vague, I catch glimpses of a fleeting memory—the first time someone referred to my hair as ‘good hair.’ It was a random man from the salon I often visited when I was young. He had no hair of his own but somehow deemed himself an expert at determining the classification of others.