Ashley McMullen
speaker
1,095 appearances
12 recordings
1 series
first heard Jun 2020
last heard May 2023
Ashley McMullen’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
A small studio out in the South Mission, so it's just me and Stacy, my hairstylist.
And I'm postcall, so been up all night, I'm delirious, and my hair's an entire mess, and I just cannot wait to sit in the chair and let Stacy work his magic as he's done month after month for the last couple years.
And so I'm sitting there and Stacy applies this chemical relaxer to my roots and I feel that familiar tingling in my scalp that progresses into a sharp stabbing pain.
Which lets us know that it's time to move to the sink.
And I feel
That cold relief wash over me as he rinses out the relaxer and then massages my scalp with shampoo and conditioner.
Afterwards we're back in the chair and I inhale that familiar scent of burning hair as he
blow dries and flat irons and then empties half a can of hairspray and
After this two hour process is done, I'm looking in the mirror and now my hair is fresh and clean, it's silky and very straight, just hanging right above my shoulders.
I'm thinking to myself
Why the hell am I still doing this?
When I was a kid, I used to wear my hair natural.
Meaning I wore it the way it grew out of my head.
I didn't apply any chemicals to change the texture.
My mom would braid my hair into these elaborate hairstyles and fasten it with all these colorful bows and berettes and balls that really make me cringe when I look at those pictures now.
But at the time as a kid I didn't really mind.
Was just hair.
And then when we moved from Chicago to the suburbs of Houston, I found myself in my new elementary school as the only black girl in my class.
And sometimes kids would ask to touch my hair, sometimes they wouldn't ask.
One kid even told all of my classmates that he thought my hair was stupid.
Showing 161–180 of 1,095 · page 9 of 55
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