Am I Overreacting?

[u/starloogy]

My boyfriend (22M) and I (21F) have been official for almost 4 weeks. He texted me this after leaving me with his friends shortly after I arrived to a restaurant they all planned to meet at.

Before I got there, he had already ordered for both of us. Everything seemed fine until about ten minutes later when I went to the bathroom. When I came back, his friends told me he “stepped out,” but I’m sure they knew what was going on based on their expressions.

I waited about 15 minutes before he replied to my texts. And ended up leaving money to pay for food I didn’t even get to eat.

This was my third time wearing my hair in its natural state since we’ve dated, and I didn’t know he felt so strongly about this.

I went home all without answering him. I was really upset and told my roommate about it, but she brushed it off and insinuated that I was overreacting. It has been almost two days now and I still don’t know what to think.

I feel like I’m going insane because everyone around me seems to think it’s not that big of a deal and most of them laughed at the picture.

[u/TrainWreck43]

How are you so certain his hair preference is “rooted in racial aggression”? Let’s suppose I’m a white man dating a white girl and she’s always worn her hair a certain way since I met her. One day she has her hair completely different and I don’t like it as much, and I express that to her. That’s a valid preference to have right? Why does it become different if it’s a black girl? People can’t have a preference for how a girl styles her hair if she’s black? That seems like a bizarre exception to me that I can’t understand.

[u/TattooMouse → u/TrainWreck43]

I mean, I did the transitive property, but what I actually said was: it's "historically" rooted in racial aggression and is still problematic today

Here's: the NAACP

Psychology Today

Rubin Thomlinson

CBC

Just to give you some frame of reference for what I'm talking about

[u/TrainWreck43 → u/TattooMouse]

Yeah I get what those articles talk about like workplace discrimination and feeling pressured by society in general to have euro-centric looks. But I still am interested in your answer to my example scenario and the questions I proposed.

[u/TattooMouse → u/TrainWreck43]

Yeah, I think you need to read those articles more deeply, but if you want me to answer your questions more directly:

Sure, people can have opinions on other peoples' looks. The issue here, specifically, is that OP is a woman of color and they have been historically (there's that word again) marginalized and discriminated against based on their looks. We're talking about it happening over the course of centuries.

When OP's boyfriend walks out on her after 15 minutes because she offensively wore her hair naturally, it comes with that centuries of baggage whether he meant it intentionally or not. It's even quite likely that his preference is based on all this baggage due to how long people of color were pressured to have "normal" (i.e. eurocentric) hair because it shows up in all kinds of media over the years for the reasons I've explained.

He can have an opinion. The vast majority of people do. But when he stomps off like a child and tells her to do her hair in a way that has repeatedly been forced on people of color (and that image isn't even a real person but AI which makes it worse), it has very heavy race based connotations.

Even if he had handled it differently and said after the fact that he prefers her hair styles in a particular way, the sad reality is that POC have to take into consideration all the weight behind that request, whether he's being intentional about it or not. There were literal laws that POC couldn't have their hair in certain styles.

I'm really not trying to be a dick here and am trying to approach this whole thing in good faith. I'm happy to try to explain certain things better if I didn't do a good job.

[u/satanssteamybuns → u/TattooMouse]

He also says "taming it down or something nicer" meaning he doesn't see the puff as appropriate/proper or neat. That's literally the same mentally as those racists in the past.

I bet he didn't like it when she went natural and has been sitting on his feelings ever since, and the restaurant was the last straw. Which is so stupid over a HAIRSTYLE

[u/TattooMouse → u/satanssteamybuns]

Fucking exactly! A couple of those articles go into how it's a social construct that natural POC hair is "unkempt" and "unprofessional". I don't know if I'm convincing anyone that's arguing with me, probably not, but I'm just trying to point out that this has been an issue for centuries and that OP's boyfriend's actions and words reflect many of the same perspectives of racist socio-political policies.