'AITA for snapping at my friend for touching my curly hair while it was drying, and ruining it?'

"AITA for snapping at my friend for touching my curly hair while it was drying, and ruining it?"

I’m 23f, my friend is the same age as me. For my entire life I have had very very curly hair. I’m white, but I have 3C curls. Anyways, super curly.

My friend has kind of wavy hair, but not super wavy and definitely nowhere near my curls. She has this habit of being super touchy with me in general, but especially with my hair. It drives me insane.

Anyone with curly hair knows how delicate they are and how temperamental they can be. ALSO, how difficult it is to fix your hair once it has been ruined.

I think I’m a bit emotionally traumatized from growing up with curly hair because I was constantly laughed at, judged, and touched because of my hair and it really is a sensitive subject for me.

I love my hair now and I take good care of it and it looks great, but I just can’t handle it when people touch it without asking. They don’t understand that they just ruined my hard work and I’ll have to wet my hair again to fix the damage they have caused.

Anyways, this weekend I was getting ready and my friend was over at my place. I had showered and was letting my hair air dry. It was in that “in between” stage of wet and dry where it looks really weird and flat (curly haired people know), but I wait until it’s fully dry to fluff it out and make it look good.

My friend came up behind me and scrunched my hair while running her fingers through it. I almost cried. I legit snapped at her and was like “what the fuck?! you just totally ruined my hair!” I was definitely rude.

I don’t care though. She has no idea what it’s like to have someone just completely ruin your hair that now can’t really be fixed. I was honestly furious and not to be dramatic, but she really did ruin it. I had to fix the pieces that she had turned frizzy and stringy and my hair just looked bad that day as a result.

She told me I was crazy and need to chill out about my hair. I told her that it’s really frustrating to do a whole wash day hair routine just for someone to rake their fingers through it, ultimately messing it up.

She said she was sorry, but she’s still frustrated that it made me so upset. I feel like it’s just insane to touch people for no reason, and I’m so tired of people grabbing my hair too.

I know I might sound obsessed about having “perfect” hair, but it’s really not even that. My hair is just so curly and also so fine that it doesn’t really take much at all to mess it up so it’s super upsetting to me when someone is rough with it on purpose and knows how I am about my hair. So, AITA?

gahap writes:

NTA. This is a VERY clear and easy boundary. "Don't touch my hair without my expression, immediate, in the moment permission" should be the STANDARD for anyone with any sense.

Your friend deserved telling off. Maybe, just maybe, if this was the first time she had ever invaded your personal space (we know it's not, you make that clear in your comments about her being super touchy with you) you would walk it back a little AFTERWARDS and explain to her why you blw up at her, and she would understand and respect your boundary moving forward.

You need to have a hard chat with this friend. Boundaries are valid and if she can't respect them, then she's not a friend, she's someone using you to get what she wants out of the relationship.

agher writes:

NAH explain to her what you have to go through for hair care and what happens if something like that happens. If she doubles down after the explanation, shes TA. If she is sorry, you both should be good for the future. The concept of intensive haircare is nothing everybody is aware of.