Venita Aspen: ‘Any Type of Hate I’ve Ever Received About My Hair Is Strictly Online’

Fans of Bravo’s Southern Charm were first introduced to self-proclaimed Southern belle Venita Aspen in season seven of the hit reality show, before she joined as a full-time cast member in season eight.

In the show’s ninth season, which premiered in September, Aspen is known by fans and around Charleston for her exquisite parties and her immaculate sense of style. But Aspen is not just a reality TV star. She once attended culinary school, has launched a successful modeling career, and is a content creator—a true multihyphenate.

Aspen sprinkles a bit of Southern flair and class in everything she does, but her journey hasn’t always been easy. As one of the few Bravo stars to flaunt her natural hair on the network, she’s been met with daily vitriol and disrespectful comments online about how she chooses to style her hair. Now she opens up to Glamour about her decades-long natural hair journey, her experiences dealing with hateful and uneducated comments while in the public eye, and how her experience has altered her perception of beauty.

A Brillo pad. Comparing my hair to a sponge that you use to wash the dishes is the number one piece of negativity I get when it comes to my hair. No one has the audacity to say it to my face. Any type of hate I’ve ever received about my hair is strictly online–in my comments, my DMs, or some online forum.

I feel like, for Black women, we’re one of the few demographics who are told that the way our hair naturally comes out of our head is the most incorrect thing you can ever do in your entire life. It’s going to make you “not as pretty” as the rest, you might not get that job, or people say that your hair looks unruly and you should straighten it or put on a wig.

It’s strange to then, as an adult, go through this process of thinking, Wait, actually my natural hair is beautiful—and why was I told that the way I was born is not acceptable? It’s this whole downward spiral, and when you really think about it, it’s literally just hair.

I’ve been natural since my senior year of high school, so I was doing it back when it still wasn’t cool. Later there was this kind of movement, a push where if you weren’t natural, you weren’t cool, but I did it a little bit before that. My best friend decided to stop perming [relaxing] her hair, and we were joined at the hip. So I was like, Well, if she can do it, I can do it. And it just became a thing.

I went to a private school, and that private school was predominantly white. I think I was one of seven kids in my graduating grade who was Black. There is this pressure that comes with wearing your hair straight and presenting yourself a certain way in that setting. When I think about what I was doing then, I’m just like, Wow, damn—I really can do anything, because that was scary. But I give credit to this girl in my homeroom class named Allyson Smith. I’ll forever give her credit for everything when it comes to my confidence in high school. She was just like, “Do it. I’ll find you some cute hair bows and headbands if you’re not comfortable.” And she was a white woman.

For all my old-school hair stylists, I had something called a Vigorol, which is one step below a perm. I don’t really know how to describe it. My mom wasn’t very keen on me having a perm. So that was my next best option. We went to an old-school beautician, and the Vigorol was one of the options. So my mom said, “we’ll do that.” When I went back to my natural hair, I just let it gradually grow out. I think it took me maybe two years because I wasn’t going to a hairdresser or anything.

That’s how I learned to style it, too, because my mom wore braids and got her hair curled and things like that. She also wasn’t too keen on having the straightest of straight hair, but she wasn’t the best at styling either. I really had to learn from scratch how to do my hair. I taught myself braids, twists, Bantu knots, how to condition it, the whole nine.

I feel like our parents were the “you go to the salon to get your hair done,” generation and the generation before them was the “you did your hair at home” group. They became happily spoiled in the fact that, okay, well, someone else can do my hair now, and there’s one less thing I have to stress about on a daily basis. So I wasn’t sitting down and learning how to do twists and braids growing up.

I think for the most part I was on the luckier end of the spectrum because I had decent friends, in the sense that I was never made fun of by them. It wasn’t actually until I was in the transitional phase that I got teased for my hair just because I didn’t know how it should look and how to cut it and trim it properly. However, I did receive pushback from my family more because that generation thinks this is not how it should be. They were taught that the way our hair naturally comes out of our head is not acceptable. So I got questions asking, “When are you going to perm your hair?” Or saying, “Hopefully this doesn't last long.” But the longer I did it and stuck to it, the more I saw that other members of my family kind of jumped on the bandwagon too.

The biggest thing I learned during this process was that it’s okay to go against beauty norms. That was a really hard one for me in the beginning, especially with the field that I was trying to go into. At the time, I was doing a mix of both being a culinary student and doing some freelance modeling on the side. I feel like it taught me that it was okay to not look like everyone else in the room.

When I started filming the show, that was something that I just had to stick with because we started filming during very humid months in Charleston. That takes away from natural hair. Anything you’ve done to it that morning is going to be gone by the end of the day. But I just had to take a stance on it because when I started, I think I was the only Bravo celebrity who wore her hair natural in the entire network and had my complexion too. But the backlash from that was wild.

Even in a recent episode, I chose to wear a hairstyle for Fashion Week that I had never done before. I just got hair crocheted in because I wanted it to be textured and big, but I didn’t want to have to think about it for a week or touch it. That was the biggest I’ve had my hair onscreen ever, and that’s when all the comments came in. “Your hair is so distracting.” “I can’t hear what the women are saying.” It’s like, Huh, how does that work?

I think if you would’ve asked me that a year ago, I would’ve been in a more broken space about it. But right now the thing that bothers me the most is that these people are sitting at home saying these snarky things and are likely in charge of someone else at some point during the day, whether that’s at work or elsewhere. What are those snarky little comments that they’re saying behind closed doors too?

It’s hurtful and it’s sad, because I always think about baby me. Would you say that to a child? Or are you just saving it for an adult? You’re just saying it to me because you think I can handle it, but it’s so insane. This year, for some reason, I am getting more comments than I did last year. People saying my hair is unruly or distracting. But I also put more of an emphasis on switching up my natural hairstyles this year so I could show more diversity. It’s just coming out of the woodwork every day. I don’t get it. It’s so silly.

I’ve never had, except for with Leva [Bonaparte, a castmate], a true conversation with any of the cast as to what it means when people attack my hair like that. Obviously Leva understands it because she’s married to a Black man and has a son with hair that’s similar to mine. But the rest of them, I don’t think they get it, and they don’t have a reason to get it. Leva is the only person that I can ever go to about it. I also wouldn’t present that conversation to everyone else unless it came up organically. Then I’m happy to explain, but it is just this thin line of “if you bring it up, then all you’re doing is talking about the negativity and the bad issues.”

But honestly the most beautiful thing about my natural hair is that it’s an extension of my wild and crazy and fulfilling personality. It definitely adds a little bit of spice. I can literally be whatever personality I’m feeling when I wake up because I can switch my hair to match it. So if I want to be young, flirty, and playful, I can match my hairstyle to that. And it works every single time.

There’s a lot of stigma behind what I'm getting ready to say, but it’s actually easier to be natural than it is to not, once you find the products. With any journey, you’re going to have to find what works best for you, and that’s going to be a lot of trial and error. Once you find the products that work for you, being natural is the easiest thing I think I’ve ever done. I like the L’Oréal Paris Elvive curl line and the Pantene Gold Series, but I’m a K18 girl! Oribe has an amazing detangling shampoo too. Every single natural woman in the entire world needs to try it once, and you’ll never go back. That shampoo is a game changer when it comes to detangling my hair.

It’s also all about mindset. I think that’s honestly the hardest part about going natural, the mindset that you have to have. All you’ve ever been told is to straighten your hair. You have to get over other people’s insecurities about what they can’t do and how they’re projecting them onto you. Once you get over that part, everything’s smooth sailing. The stigma of what beauty is supposed to look like is gone for me. I can just see beauty individually now versus seeing it as some overarching system telling us we all have to look and feel and move under the same beauty standards.

In fact, that’s why Diana Ross is my biggest hair inspiration. She did it in a way that was true to who she was. She was also able to still please the industry that we’re in, because unfortunately we still have to figure out a way to please the masses. She just found such a very strong middle ground with that. The hair was still big and had the look, but it was “together” for those who thought that her hair might be unruly. She just did it, and she did it very well.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Jamie Wilson is a New York–ased beauty writer and editor. She previously held the title of beauty editor at Harper’s Bazaar writing both print and digital features, trend stories, celebrity interviews, and cover stories and has also written for Glamour and WWD. She can usually be found testing out new beauty products from her Brooklyn apartment, and spending quality time with her dog, Cleo. You can follow her on Instagram @justjamiemarie.

Originally Appeared on Glamour