From curly to coily, Black hair comes in numerous magnificent textures. And while we’ve come a long way in celebrating natural hair, relaxed hair was literally the only way to rock your curls and coils back in the day.
And for most Black women who grew up in the 70s all the way to the 00s, the pungent sodium hydroxide odor, a thick line of Vaseline applied around the ears and edges, and baby powder generously poured onto the scalp to “sort of protecting” it from the constant urge to vigorously itch, is something they’ll never forget.
Oh, and who’d ever forget the notoriously memorized and ingrained words: “if you feel it burning, baby, that just means it’s working.”
It was quite a time.
A time when straight hair was idolized, and every young girl dreading picture day or swimming classes just wanted to emulate the beautiful, little Black girls who graced the cover of some of the relaxer boxes by rocking their picture-perfect shiny bobs and glorious ringlets.
Well, it turns out that those little Black girls, the original It girls, are all grown up, and they recently revealed themselves in a viral Tweet thread, per the HuffPost.
On Sunday, Twitter user @prettiesluxury wrote: Ï remember wanting to be the face a hair relaxer so bad.”
Then on Tuesday, another Twitter user named @AshTheDonLeon quoted the tweet, asking, “where are these girls today? Show yourselves.”
Within seconds, some relaxer box girls flooded Ash Leon’s comment section with their current-day images. Here are some of them now:
Here I am today, a successful artist wearing 40” bussdowns on national tv, still with no actual perm in my head. #themboxesbelying https://t.co/QpnE6tfeer pic.twitter.com/mQOY1rXVCq
— mani pedi (@imbabytate) October 3, 2022
Yall remember when Keyshia Cole used to be on the Relaxer Box? I should’ve put some of that in to honor her during this #Verzuz pic.twitter.com/jM54k3T1MI
— really shiesty. (@GerberSnackz) January 22, 2021
So Meagan Good on the smooth touch perms now. .what happened to Keyshia Cole?? Lok pic.twitter.com/1D781kpI
— * .SHAYYYYY. * (@x_soloPretty_x) July 1, 2012
IM HERE pic.twitter.com/uj0FSqbawK
— jordan (@itssvictoria__) October 4, 2022
Lil mama to the left pic.twitter.com/eewiZuCGs8
— Ally (@_ilyally) October 3, 2022
22 years later & yes I do still have the gap pic.twitter.com/5BG4KbaOKg
— ko.chanel (@kochanel5) October 4, 2022
oh we outchea…taller, blonder but the sass is still the same ♀️ pic.twitter.com/oPDpAoiHat
— stfu, nat. (@nataliegithu) October 3, 2022
Present pic.twitter.com/coPiJcs6B7
— Creating Intentionally (@createdbyjoce) October 3, 2022
I saw that we were doing a sort of where are they now for perm boxes but I have to pull out my old hair color box! I was 19 in this & they still be selling this in some stores… How?! pic.twitter.com/OSbVq9BV5S
— Kandi Burruss (@Kandi) October 4, 2022
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Good to see they’re doing great, and most of them abandoned the shiny bobs and ringlets and are now rocking their natural curls.
