just emmas interview stuff

My friend's experience with his hair being emphasized and picked on in school and other environments. Even as an adult, other people's actions can make him feel uncomfortable. An incident in a barbershop made him think he was going bald, but it turned out to be a misunderstanding. Despite the challenges, he values his curly hair as a part of his cultural and religious identity. People's comments and how it is handled affect him, but he has come out on top. My friend really had the importance of his hair emphasized to him at a young age, in high school, and in middle school, and mostly a lot of schools, all the levels of schooling. Kids can be pretty mean, you know, especially depending on the environment you're raised in. If you look a little bit different, you're going to be picked on, unfortunately, and if you're in an environment where they emphasize certain traits over another, it can definitely beat you down and make you feel disadvantaged or singled out, and this is what my friend's experience was in relation to that. Even outside of schooling, like day-to-day lives, when you're fully grown and mostly independent, other people's decisions and actions can make you feel squeamish in your own body or about a future, such as this incident in the barbershop. There was one time when I was getting a haircut, and, just to be on the fun side, the barber pulled my hair and like parted it, and showed me in the mirror what it looked like, what length, and I thought it was going bald, and I cried that time. Like, I didn't want to go bald, but it just turned out that he parted my hair, so... Did he cut his hair or part it for you? No. But in the end, it's really up to the individual and how they perceive and internalize something to digest it in a way that doesn't hurt them, that isn't toxic, of either letting go or taking pride in the fact that you have this feature, and this is my friend's experience with that. I feel like it's something that's heritable that can show ancestry, and even if I don't always keep kosher and things like that, it's something that ties me to my identity. So my close friend has always had curly hair, and curly hair is, of course, pretty difficult to tame into action, and it's very closely associated with his cultural and religious identity, so he has a lot of significance on it, and how people comment about it really affects him, how it's handled really affects him, and it is definitely a good signifier of his character and personal resolve with how he came out on top.