Women come together to show that Black hair, thick and curly, is beautiful too

Rice, right, the founder and organizer of the KC Curly Photoshoot, with participants as the Sixth Annual KC Curly Photoshoot gets underway. Photo: Rich Sugg/The Kansas City Star/TNS

Growing up in a multicultural household, Christa Rice felt her thick, naturally curly hair was something undesirable, something to be hidden away.

“As a kid I had the thickest hair in all my family,” says Rice, an artist and social worker from Kansas City in the United States. “My family is Black, Mexican and Native American. We all look different. Me and my sister both had these curls that nobody else has, and my family used to tell us we needed to perm it because it was too thick. As a kid hearing that, you begin to feel it is ugly.”