The Big Chop
Graphic by: Agnes Lee
Black hair has been through a lot. Controlling it is a societal fixation, as any refusal to adhere to the eurocentric standard –– straight and finely textured –– is often scrutinized and shamed. When it comes to Black hair, something as miniscule as a styling choice does not exist in a vacuum, but rather is guided by desires to evade, subvert, or adhere to notions of beauty and acceptability more broadly. Even when you chop it all off.
Laila Ritter, a senior at The Lawrenceville School in New Jersey, did just that this past July. “It was doing a lot to my hair to have it not just relaxed, but getting it flat-ironed for nice occasions and having to pull it back in a really tight ponytail everyday,” Laila said. At the summer peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, she noticed her hair wasn’t healthy or growing the way she wanted it to, “The damage was done.”
For generations, Black women have spent countless hours hot combing, blow-drying and flat-ironing their hair. Chemical straighteners such as relaxers promise long term effects with minimal time input, as visits to the salon for touch-ups are only necessary every few months. However, overtime these processes leave hair brittle and prone to breakage as the cuticles weaken and burn.
Once Laila worked up the courage to tell her sister that she wanted to do The Big Chop, there was no going back. She sat in the bathroom while her mom and sister snipped away at her hair. “I cried so much,” Laila said, “Just watching all my hair fall from my head…I didn’t realize how connected I was to it.”
Historically, Black hair has served as a battleground for racial discourse and struggle. In the mid 1900s, Black hairstyles were foundational to many Black liberation movements, trouncing dehuminizing stereotypes about hair texture that arose during the transatlantic slave trade and the centuries that followed. The first anti-hair descrimination law was passed as recently as 2019, following several high-profile cases involving Black women who lost their jobs or were sent home from school because of their locs and braids.
Reya, an entrepreneur and content creator based in Atlanta, felt pressured to change her hair in order to fit the space she was in, whether that be a job interview or special event. That changed after her Big Chop. “There’s no more hiding,” she said. “I feel like when I show up into a space, I’m showing up as me.”
Laila Ritter a couple months after her Big Chop. Images courtesy of Laila Ritter.
Years later, Reya places the moment of her Big Chop in the context of finding her footing as an adult. She had just taken up modeling and content creation, but something didn’t feel right. “For whatever reason, It just wasn’t clicking for me,” she said. Clarity came in a salon chair, after she took scissors to her first long lock of hair. “It felt great. It felt like I was a new woman and I was about to step into a new life,” Reya said. She took to social media afterwards, posting a before and after video on Instagram with India Aarie’s song “I Am Not My Hair” playing in the background. “I felt...free. I felt powerful. I felt fierce,” Reya said in the caption.
Opting for The Big Chop is about more than just hair. The term itself rides on the coattails of the Natural Hair Movement of the 1960s, which encouraged women across the African Diaspora to take pride in their identity by embracing their natural curls.
Attending a predominately white school exacerbated the pressure for Laila to acquiesce in eurocentric beauty standards. Her Big Chop was not a purely symbolic rejection of the standard, it helped her shed harmful notions of what she had to look like in order to be accepted. “I was like, you know what, I'm done trying to just be like what I think everyone wants me to be and what I think people want to see. I need to do something for me for once,” Laila said.
When young Black girls in her community began reaching out to her about their own desires to start fresh and go natural, she realized that she made an impact far bigger than herself. “It was a lot to realize I was actually influencing these kids to do that,” she said. “I thought it was cool.”
“If you’re thinking about it, just do it,” Reya advised those considering their own Big Chop. The process is filled with trial and error, figuring out the desired length, which styling products to use, and adjusting to a new hair routine. She suggests researching beforehand how to cut it yourself, or to find someone trustworthy to do it for you. But, “at the end of the day, it’s hair,” Reya said, “It’ll grow back.”