I spent decades straightening my 'Jewish hair' – until I realised I was hiding my true self | Diana Spechler

For decades I wrangled my frizz in an attempt to fit in. But amid rising antisemitism, I decided to embrace my identity

Sometime after 7 October 2023, I decided to stop straightening my hair. For decades, I had employed round brushes and flat irons and smoothing oils in service of wrangling the Jew frizz, spending money I barely had on keratin treatments and Brazilian blowouts.

But as swastikas splattered public walls, as bomb threats blasted synagogues, as ancient conspiracy theories rose from the dead, as a congresswoman tweeted Antisemitism is wrong, but ...", I examined what I'd been doing: trying to look less Jewish; trying, as perhaps my great-grandparents did, to assimilate. For the first time, I felt the violence in that choice.

Diana Spechler is an author and essayist. She writes the newsletter Dispatches from the Road

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