Amandla Stenberg Had Burnt Bangs Before Embracing Natural Hair

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We can put a pin on the exact moment that Amandla Stenberg first started embracing their natural hair. Thanks, Instagram. 71 weeks ago – April of 2015 – Amandla posted their first photo with completely unstraightened hair.

Stenberg eased into the look by sporting perfectly straightened bangs with their naturally curly locks, and then started running over their roots with a straightener.

“I’ve gone through so many different hair stages,” Stenberg told Glamour. “My first stage was when I was younger, and I thought my hair was too big, so I always kept it in this giant poof on top of my head. I wasn’t that great at doing ponytails, and so it was always really messy, and after that, as I kind of hit puberty and went to middle school and everything, I started doing things to make it smaller and straighter.” Amandla fought their natural hair texture before accepting it. “I got Keratin treatments, and then I had bangs that I straightened every day. It was awful. It was like frying the front part of my hair off.”

Stenberg saw people they looked up to on the internet embracing their natural texture. “I was basically doing anything to make it look straight, and then I came to the realization that I—because of the internet honestly, because of seeing people on the internet post pictures with their natural hair, I realized like, ‘Oh, wait, this is actually so cool. Why have I been fighting this component of myself for so long?’ And so I chopped it all off and slowly grew it back in its natural state, and now I love it.” We’re so glad they did, because their trendsetting hair looks constantly slay.

Everybody has lapses in confidence, though. “I still have moments once in a while where I feel the need to conform, but that’s also not really my—those are not my original ideas, like I don’t really feel that inside,” they said. “It’s just when you look around and you see people with straight hair in media, you kind of feel the need to fit in, so it’s kind of a constant battle loving my hair. It’s something that I’m continuously working on.”

Here are some of Amandla’s best natural hair looks: