Wafaya Obdallah sort of takes your breath away—she has rich, coffee color skin and wildly curly hair blossoming out of her head, hair that isn’t just hair but attitude.

Wafaya, who runs Oasis, a hair and tanning salon off Rockville Pike and one of the only salons in the area that specializes in cutting curly hair, encourages girls and guys to take on their natural looks.

“[My salon’s goal is] to only sell organic products and to teach all the curlies of the Maryland world how to celebrate and keep their locks beautiful,” Wafaya said.

Wafaya’s salon has received recognition for being completely wind-powered, uses completely organic hair products and selling jewelry as a part of a charity for countries in need.

In addition to her environmentally friendly goals and charity work she works get girls and women to wear their hair naturally. Wafaya is of Egyptian descent, which is where her journey with curls began. European influences on the culture stressed that straight hair was pretty and most girls felt that straight hair was the only way to go.

“As you grow up you start learning to embrace yourself,” Wafaya said. “It seems like hair is shallow but it’s so much more than that. I was always looking for a way to make curly hair be at its most beautiful.”

While Wafaya was getting her political science degree at the University of Maryland and looking for a way to pay for law school, she learned that she could get a government grant to pay for cosmetology school.

After she had been a stylist at Oasis for nine years, Wafaya’s boss was ready to sell the salon and she was ready to buy. For years Wafaya has worked to make the salon economically sound and environmentally safe all while working with girls and boys and their hair.

“I’ve never seen anyone who’s as passionate as she is,” said senior Suzy Rudorfer, who is also a member of the Observer staff. “She’s dedicated her whole business to people with curly hair.”

Rudorfer, who has very curly hair, has been seeing Wafaya for about seven or eight years and is inspired by her “good attitude and how she is always warm, and friendly to everyone.”

Wafaya has always been devoted to the salon but her work with curly hair was influenced by the book Curly Girl by Lorraine Massey, an English cosmetologist and one of the major advocates for curly hair.

“We’ve been given the image that curly hair is messy and unprofessional,” Wafaya said. “[Universal preference for straight hair] is actually a form of racism.”

According to Curly Girl, a sociologist might point out that many people’s preference for straight hair is a subtle side effect of racism because most people have been influenced by the stereotypes of the white Anglo-Saxon look, which includes straight blond hair.

Massey was once told by a New York City beauty school owner that “hair is hair, we treat curly the same as straight.” However, Massey’s book cites science—the fiber of straight hair is almost a perfect circle whereas the fiber of curly hair is an ellipse or oval, which accounts for the difference.

Wafaya encourages girls with curly hair to wear it naturally and teaches them how to handle it through educating them about their hair and teaching them how curly hair is not as difficult as it seems.

“[They have to] understand that [their] hair by nature is frizzy and dehydrated,” Wafaya said. “You have to hydrate your hair.”

Junior Anna Kimmelblatt struggles with her curly hair because it’s frizzy tendency makes it difficult to wear naturally.

“I never wear my hair natural,” Kimmelblatt said. “I hate my curls and have no desire to let anyone see what my hair really looks like. I flat-iron my hair everyday using heat care products. I love when it’s straight because it’s so much easier to control, and straightening it only takes me about ten minutes, so it’s pretty easy to change.”

While Kimmelblatt straightens her hair to make it more manageable, she does believe that natural hair is beautiful and makes sure that her hair products will not do any damage to her hair.

“I consider beautiful hair to be healthy hair,” Kimmelblatt said. “My iron is hair safe, and my heat care products protect it from damage really well. Beautiful hair to me is long, but not Rapunzel long and definitely not thin [because] it has to be hydrated. Beautiful hair is also naturally colored—you were born with the color that looks best on you.”

Senior Bluma Millman also has extremely curly hair and struggles to handle it. When hair is long it can not be brushed and when it is short it gets very frizzy. However, she persists and still wears her hair naturally.

“I used to think that only straight hair was beautiful,” Millman said. “Now I am happy that I have curly hair because I think that curly hair is [more] unique [than] and just as beautiful as straight hair.”

Wafaya’s passion about curly hair stems beyond the superficial implications of hair—it is a love her culture and her natural beauty.

“I was always looking for a way to make curly hair be at its most beautiful,” Wafaya said.