There's an all-out culture war over curls raging in Belize, it's happening in private offices, government administrative centers, and on every social media feed.
But It started at the Belmopan City council where one young woman was told to straighten her hair because it was quote: "offensive"
And tonight Cherisse Halsall has a conversation with Senator Isabel Bennet, a woman who proudly wears her crown of kink in Belize's senate, she says hair is part of racial identity.
She's the girl that launched a thousand posts, but Cheyenne Banner had no idea that her refusal to follow her supervisor's suggestion to quote, "do something about" her naturally styled afro would inspire naturals all over Belize and effectively start a movement.
And among the hashtag Belizean afro posts, there were even snaps of some natural hair higher-ups like. Women like the Chief justice Michelle Arana and PUP senator Isabelle Bennet. I caught up with Bennet this afternoon to have a chat about what was once the taming of the kink and why she believes it's got to stop.
Isabelle Bennet, Senator
"It's kind of something that we do to our black girls if I could use that word, we put them through a right of passage kind of thing, its going to high school now you have to have your hair straight kind of thing, but I would discourage any mother. If your child is natural keep it like that. Help her to learn and embrace every kink that she has because that's the naturalness in which she was born."
"It's how I guess to a large extent the colonial past that we still carry in our country because a lot of the Caribbean countries have changed those policies and they are more embracing of the characteristics of we are as a black person or as a black race. So yes some people will have that and so it therefore means that we need to go back and revised any kind of document that may speak to those kind of trends, because we need to liberate our people and not suppress."
"If it's time it has long been because I think just with domestic violence a lot of women that have kinky hair like mine are insulted or are threatened or at time intimidated, employers etc. even in their working environment your hair is part of your identity it's part of your race."
And if hair and its presentation is linked to race then one activist told us that limitation is nothing more than discrimination.
Derrica Castillo- Salazar, Managing Director, Our Circle
"I think discrimination on any level is discrimination and whether it's how you speak, how you carry yourself, how you look and I believe that if the story has that much validity that she's actually being targeted for her hair that is something that should be championed, I was making mentioned earlier that it should be something that's a movement because we have a lot of women here with natural hair, we had the issue with the police, the women in the police department who were told they could not wear dreadlocks. Coming from the military I know there are some restrictions as well in regards to the hairstyle, and I know that the police department and the defense force, those are strict entities, there's justification to why your hair should be a certain way, however, if you're out there working and that's your comfort zone, this is you embracing your blackness, this is you showing that I'm a proud black woman. I think discrimination at any level in regards to that is definitely condemned. Next you will hear she will have to wear baggy clothes, so her hips don't show or her breasts don't show. She is a woman and she is expressing herself from the tip of her hair to the tip of her toe, so she should not be discriminated or sanctioned for that."
And despite the controversy going on at Belmopan's City council, wider society has embraced natural hair with many believing that the variety being expressed is simply adding colors to the human rainbow.
Isabelle Bennet, Senator
"Before I had my natural hair you would get the hiss and the huss from the men on the streets kind of thing, but its interesting now the dimension is so wide that you get the compliment and you get real genuine compliment from men "miss I love your natural" - "wow you're" and it's like well thank you sir, thank you sir. When I attend the senate and I wear my hair in those particular afros depending on the size, style etc, if I'm giving off that message I am happy to do, because then I hope that it's a liberating message to mothers, fathers and girls who are coming up with my kind of kinky hair."
We reached out to Cheyenne Banner for comment but she refrained, telling us only that the matter is still ongoing.
