Mutual respect is a core part of any happy and healthy relationship. You should care about your partner’s boundaries and accept them for who they are without wishing they were entirely different. It would be heartbreaking to realize that a core part of who you are, like your natural hair, annoys your partner and that they’re unwilling to accept it.
Caught up in a very sensitive piece of relationship drama, redditor u/starloogy went viral online after turning to the ‘AmIOverreacting’ online community for advice. She shared how her boyfriend criticized her natural hair while wishing that she looked more like an AI image. You’ll find the full story below.
Bored Panda has gotten in touch with the author to hear more about what happened, and we’ll update the article as soon as we hear back from her.
It's important that you learn to embrace who you are and to love all parts of yourself. Unfortunately, some people will always pressure you to change
Image credits: Mizuno K/Pexels (not the actual photo)
A woman asked the internet for help after her boyfriend started criticizing her, demanding that she look more like a picture generated using artificial intelligence
Image credits: starloogy
Image credits: starloogy
Image credits: starloogy
It can hurt when the people closest to you criticize you and your hair. You need to move past that negativity, show yourself compassion, and find people who support you
Image credits: Alex Green/Pexels (not the actual photo)
Social media content creator Lai wrote in Glamour magazine that it’s vital to filter out and unlearn negative self-talk when it comes to your natural hair.
“For me, the first step was to recognize and then confront the negative beliefs that I had acquired about my natural hair, and stop the discouraging self-talk in its tracks. I'm sure you will have heard phrases like: ‘Tame your frizz’; ‘Your hair isn’t professional’; ‘It’s too big / too much’; ‘Why don’t you just tie it up? / straighten it? / relax it?’” she said.
According to Lai, she constantly kept hearing this barrage of criticism from childhood into her teenage years and even into adulthood. The people most often saying these comments were, unfortunately, those closest to her. She valued their opinions, so, they hurt the most.
“This negativity can cause lasting damage not just for our hair, but our mental health, self-esteem, and self-identity,” the content creator said.
“So it wasn't just the relaxers or heat that damaged my hair—it was as much the lack of support, representation, and education that I received around caring for it. I know it can take time to build the confidence to wear your hair naturally—it wasn’t until I was 21 that I took the plunge, and even then it took me a couple of years to unlearn all the negative bias.”
From her perspective, it’s important to understand your hair’s needs. You can try experimenting with a few different styling techniques to learn more about your hair and to see what works and what doesn’t. If you take photos, you can then refer to your earlier looks to remember what you liked and didn’t about your style.
Meanwhile, managing expectations is also key. “Having realistic expectations of your hair is key to building a lasting relationship with it, so make sure you treat yourself, and your hair, with the same compassion that you extend to others,” Lai writes in Glamour.
“Let go of the idea of perfection and remember that faultless, ‘frizz-free’ hair simply doesn’t exist—as much as social media may make you feel. Repeat after me—frizz is a great quality of healthy hair!”
Aside from that, it helps when you surround yourself with people who support you and have embraced their natural hair as well. That way, you’ll feel more confident liking yourself for who you are, too.
It's a red flag if your partner wants you to change some core parts of who you are and how you look
Image credits: Alex Green/Pexels (not the actual photo)
There are a lot of issues with what the viral post author’s boyfriend did, from how he communicated with her and put her in an embarrassing situation to the fact that he even chose to criticize her appearance in the first place.
Successful relationships require a lot of hard work. It’s not like you can get together with a person and then let the relationship work itself out. You need to consistently show up and invest your time, energy, effort, and emotions in the other person if you want to get closer to them.
A key part of this means being open and honest with one another. That being said, how, when, and where you say something is as important as what you say. For example, if there’s an important issue you want to discuss, you should do so privately and in person. Something sensitive shouldn’t be talked about via text.
Nor should you put the other person in a social setting where you’ve clearly spoken to your friends about the issue you’ve had and then you leave them all behind. It’s embarrassing for your partner and it shows that you don’t care about their emotional wellbeing.
That’s on top of the fact that there are certain things you should not be criticizing about your partner in the first place. Some topics are simply off-limits. For instance, you should not be pressuring your partner to change their natural hair, eye color, complexion, etc.
There are a few niche situations where you can have a delicate, careful talk with your partner about their lifestyle and appearance, but it should be done only if something is truly problematic. For example, if they don’t take enough care of their hygiene, if their sense of style is something that might be insensitive, or if you’d like them to prioritize their health a bit more and steer clear of bad habits.
What’s not right is criticizing someone’s natural hairstyle and telling them (via text, in a social setting) that you’d like them to look more like someone else… that ‘someone else’ being a picture of a person created via generative artificial intelligence.
It’s a bizarre situation to find yourself in and there’s nothing wrong with being upset. Anyone would feel attacked and as though they’re ‘not good enough,’ even though there’s nothing actually wrong.
Have you ever been in a situation where your partner, relative, or good friend starts criticizing the fundamental parts of who you are? Has someone you dated ever tried to pressure you to change something about your appearance like your hair? What advice would you give the author of the viral story? What would you do if you were in her shoes? Let us know in the comments!
As the story went viral, many internet users rushed to share how shocked they were. Here's the advice they gave the young woman
