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Since I have fair skin, I have to stay out of the sun. I can't stand the sun. I dyed my hair red for a while during the 1990s but I'm actually a natural blonde.

I think when I first straightened my hair, I was a teenager. I don't believe that I was consciously doing it to look white or to be on television. It never crossed my mind. All of the girls in my neighborhood got perms and their hair straightened. But I know that historically it was to assimilate and there are some people who do it for that reason.

When I was younger, I went through a phase when I didn't like my hair. Because the school I went to was primarily Caucasian, there wasn't anyone who had my hair texture. I remember one day I straightened my hair, and that was the first day that people gave me compliments on it.

Tanning is tricky, because a lot of people just look orange.

My hair journey involved a lot of trying to figure out how to deal with my hair as a bi-racial girl in a white community living in Long Island, N.Y., where no one had a clue what to do with it.

I never have had blonde hair. I have never had straight hair. I never wear pink clothes or spray tan and I never wore heels to school.

As a young girl, I definitely struggled with knowing what to do with my hair. I was just in a neighborhood that had mostly white people, and the hair norm was long and sleek and straight. My hair naturally was curly, and I didn't have that many references.

I can't have brown hair for some reason. I don't think it goes with my skin tone. The second I see it turn brown in the sun, I dye it black - the blacker the better.

I come from an interracial family: My father is from Nigeria, and so he is African-American, and my mother is American and white, so I rarely see skin color. It's never an issue for me.