Tracee Ellis Ross talks about “Hair Tales” and how to learn to love the way you look

Every woman has a hair story. No matter the texture, length, healthy or damaged, all black women can tell you their life stories through their hair. In a new original series on the Oprah Winfrey Network and Hulu Tales of hair, host and executive producer Tracee Ellis Ross interviews the current generation of hair icons about their lives through the lens of their crowns. The episodes, which feature guests including Winfrey (another of the show’s executive producers), Issa Rae, and Rep. Ayanna Presley, reach a depth that speaks to the soul of every black woman, touching on the personal, the familial, and even the political throughout their conversations.

Each episode is intimate; the opening interviews feel like a peek into the guests’ childhood diaries as they recall the hair role models of their youth and the lessons they learned from how those around them treated their styles. Interstitial scenes include commentary from hair care experts and activists, as well as anecdotes from a bustling salon of women touching on everything from the confidence gained by the Big Chop to new names for controversial terms (“diaper” divides the room between resentment and empowerment reclamation). All the elements come together to create a show that doesn’t lecture you, but rather treats the cultural and emotional baggage surrounding hair with empathy and love.

When asked about her hopes for the impact of the series, Ross hopes that individuals and the beauty industry as a whole will also treat black women with love and full empathetic care. “I really hope that everyone will gain a deeper respect and love for black women Tales of hair and that it really helps everyone stop seeing us as our parts and see us as whole powerful important beings who tip the balance in almost everything. Culture, elections, politics, economy, family.” As well as being a vision of a more just future, her answer is also the perfect explanation for the series itself. Tales of hair brings the essential, healing space of the salon to the small screen.

Below, Ross talks to BAZAAR about the deliberate and organic elements of the series’ development, the stories that emerged in multiple interviews, and her own hair stories.

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The show is about hair, but also about being a black woman, identity, perception, mental health. Why did you decide to have these conversations through the lens of Black hair?

My experience in my life is this hair and my hair was like a portal to my soul. I think part of it comes from cultural and societal attitudes towards black women’s hair and the way it’s been talked about. Most of us have acquired this truly inextricably linked relationship with our hair. I could write my journey of self-acceptance through my hair.

We intended this series to be a love letter to black women, offering—for the first time, because I don’t recall it happening anywhere else—an intimate celebration, discovery, and exploration of black women’s humanity, using hair as a metaphor and organizing principle to express the expansiveness of who we are. And also to give context to our humanity and our experience. So often we are decontextualized in our lives and unable to see who we are and what we are in relation to our history, to each other, to our community and to the world. So it was a deliberate opportunity for us to tell that story, and the hair felt like the right entry.

When you were planning the series, were there any specific themes you wanted to highlight or conversations you wanted to have? Or did it just all come out very organically?

A lot of it happened organically, but there was a lot of intent in the process of developing this show for television and really figuring out how to create a sense of intimacy from a television show. How do you honor the sanctity and gravity of this kind of conversation and this topic? How do you allow this sharing of the black woman to be our story?

In terms of subject matter, because of how focused we were and how we built the team with black women in front of and behind the camera, then it was about getting out of the way and letting things unfold. In the interviews, [executive producers Raeshem Nijhon and Carri Twigg] and I really worked so hard together as a team to come up with questions. One of my favorite questions for Ayana was, “Tell me about your freedom. Teach me about your freedom.’ So after building the questions, the structure, the people’s choices, we let the themes emerge.

The amazing thing is how many similarities there were in all the stories. I found so much comfort in that and how we all seemed to be hurt by such things. We all seemed to be embarrassed in such areas. We’ve all had stories with scissors and things like that. Then there were all the magical surprises of how people expressed things, especially and unexpectedly, some of the things that were shared in the salon were magic. There were no scripts there; there were no questions asked. It was just like, “Go on,” you know, and the cameras were rolling. So the topic came up organically.

You’ve become a hair icon, but I wanted to go back to your own self-discovery days when you were in your 20s working in fashion and modeling in New York. Where has your hair journey been at this point?

Oh my God, my hair was just fried, dyed and done. I didn’t know what to do with my hair. The other day I posted a picture of my 18-year-old wife in Paris on my story and someone said, “Oh my God, your hair looks so great.” I thought, “But did it work?” In my 20s I started wearing my hair natural. As I approached my 20s, I really embraced my natural texture and figured out what products to use and what would work best and things like that.

My hair journey has been difficult. I can really write down my self-acceptance through my journey with my hair, understanding it and figuring myself out, and finding strangely that my hair can actually do anything if I take care of it and respect it. Like me. I can do anything if I treat myself well and really put in the work to get there. I would say from 12 to 25 was just tough.

Isn’t that for everyone? I’m 28 and getting out of it.

yes These are difficult years. I hope they are not as difficult for people in that age group now as it was for me when I was in that age group because there are more products now. We see ourselves mirrored back to ourselves more and more often. The pattern exists. I hope it’s not what it was.

I also wanted to ask you one of the great questions you ask your guests: Who are you outside of what the world expects of you?

This is also one of my favorite questions that I came up with. oh god who am i … This is so interesting. Sometimes I’m a really quiet, shy girl, but I think I’m mostly a homebody. I am a homebody who likes to cook and bathe.

In terms of the beauty industry as a whole, how do you want this project to help push the industry forward? What does a world look like where black women aren’t defined solely or as much by their looks?

I truly hope everyone gains a deeper respect and love for black women Tales of hair and that it really helps everyone stop seeing us as our parts and see us as whole powerful important beings who tip the balance in almost everything. Culture, elections, politics, economy, family.

One of my deeper missions is to really change the beauty industry’s false belief that black hair care is a niche market and that we shouldn’t have all the choices and options that everyone else has. Also the belief that our hair is so different that no one can tell. It just needs moisture, folks. That’s the most important thing to me, that everywhere from the executive offices to the retail shelves there will be a better sense of diversity and inclusion and a major effort put into creating a more level playing field for those who create products and whatnot on the shelves.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.