Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz says pressure to straighten her curly hair followed her throughout her career

For decades, Rep. Deb­bie Wasser­man Schultz has been known not just for her polit­i­cal lead­er­ship but for her sig­na­ture curly hair — a fea­ture that’s sparked both admi­ra­tion and crit­i­cism.

When she was in her mid-20s and prepar­ing her first run for the Flori­da State House, Wasser­man Schultz said old­er women repeat­ed­ly urged her to “do some­thing” about her curls.

“They would say, ‘You need a more man­age­able, pro­fes­sion­al look,’” she recalled dur­ing an episode of We Are Spi­ral­ing, a new pod­cast about curly hair host­ed by for­mer jour­nal­ist Priya Anand.

Despite the pres­sure, Wasser­man Schultz, now 59, refused to straight­en her hair. But that choice came with pub­lic ridicule. In 2012, a Fox News host mock­ing­ly called her “Frizzil­la,” while Adweek com­pared her curls to “ramen noo­dles.”

The Broader Bias Against Curls

Her expe­ri­ence high­lights a deep­er soci­etal bias. Stud­ies show that women with curly hair are often seen as less pro­fes­sion­al than those with straight hair.

A 2023 study by Lin­den­wood Uni­ver­si­ty found straight-haired women were rat­ed high­er for job-relat­ed char­ac­ter­is­tics than curly-haired women. Sim­i­lar­ly, a 2021 study from Duke Uni­ver­si­ty and Michi­gan State Uni­ver­si­ty found that Black women with nat­ur­al hair­styles were viewed as less com­pe­tent and less like­ly to be hired than those with straight­ened hair or white women with any tex­ture.

Legislative Push and Cultural Shifts

In recent years, law­mak­ers have tried to com­bat this dis­crim­i­na­tion through ini­tia­tives like the CROWN Act (Cre­ate a Respect­ful and Open World for Nat­ur­al Hair), first intro­duced in 2019, which bans race-based hair dis­crim­i­na­tion.

Yet, as pod­cast host Anand point­ed out, stig­ma per­sists even beyond race. She not­ed that many pro­fes­sion­als still feel pres­sured to hide their nat­ur­al curls, ref­er­enc­ing how Michelle Oba­ma revealed she straight­ened her hair while in the White House so the coun­try could “adjust to a Black fam­i­ly in pow­er.”

“This idea comes up all the time,” Anand said. “That curly hair, for some rea­son, isn’t pro­fes­sion­al. But it’s just as nat­ur­al and valid as any oth­er tex­ture.”

Wasser­man Schultz’s deci­sion to embrace her curls, despite crit­i­cism, serves as a reminder that authen­tic­i­ty can also be an act of qui­et defi­ance.

“I’m proud of my curly locks,” she said — and for count­less women watch­ing, that pride means more than any pol­ished appear­ance ever could.