Watch: Equality and the hunt for hair products in Wales ( Still images by Dami Fawehinmi )Ī survey commissioned by Black Ballad found 27% of respondents from Wales travelled 45 minutes or more to get to their nearest beauty store. It wasn’t even a small service - it was practically non-existent. While I can reflect back and laugh at some of the extreme DIY haircare tricks I used to use, it also highlights a very real and painful reality that black haircare was not a priority in Wales.

If bad hair days also described the health of your hair and not just the aesthetic, then it was safe to say I have spent over two thirds of my life having bad hair days.

Read more: Frustrated with the lack of Black haircare products available in Scotland, this woman created her own Too young to really understand the deeper concepts of the song, I would tell friends “I am not my hair” to avoid having to explain the Jamaica-shaped scab near my temple from a hair straightener, and why my 'new hair' looked more like a sun visor than a fringe. In 2006, when India Arie released the single ‘I Am Not My Hair’, my 15-year-old self joined the conscious army in declaring that I indeed was not my hair.

Chloe Seivwright recalls a time before YouTube and online shopping, when navigating a haircare routine in Wales was not at all easy. To mark Black History Month, Yahoo UK launches Black & Beautiful In Britain, a four-part video series in collaboration with digital publisher Black Ballad. Black girls in Wales would be forced to travel for miles and miles to buy the haircare products they needed because the products available on the high street weren't for their hair type.

Curl no progress