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Over three years ago, during the first few months of the global pandemic, actor Kat Graham filmed a “Beauty Secrets” video for Vogue. “The shoot happened at the peak of my COVID inner reflection journey,” Graham shared over the phone. “If you would’ve told me that I would figure out how to love myself more fiercely through a high fashion magazine, I would’ve laughed.”
The experience is chronicled in her new book, Seasons of You: A Journal That Follows Your Nature, out today.
When she got the call to spill the secrets behind her beauty routine, Graham wasn’t quite sure that the timing was right. “I meditated on it and the download I got was that I needed to do the video, and do it with my ’fro.”
That was new for Graham, who had previously worn her hair styled in wigs and weaves for roles like the CW’s “The Vampire Diaries.” “It was not something that I necessarily wanted to do,” she says. But she listened to her intuition, opening up on camera about how she kept her “hair in cornrows because most of the jobs I had done as an actress wanted a certain kind of look.” But for the past four months she had leaned into her natural texture, just “wearing her hair really, really big.”
Bright pink afro pick in hand and having “so much fun,” she took us through her routine of combing out her curls to get her desired style. “Quarantine has completely changed me, I don’t know if I would have even show this to you before,” she says on the “Beauty Secrets” video. A few moments later, as she’s sharing hair products she loves to condition with, the tears came. “I had never had to be on my own with my hair [pre-pandemic,]” Graham shares candidly as she cries as she stares directly into the camera. But finding products that worked for her hair helped her realize “my hair will work for me,” if I don’t give up on it.
Once the video was posted to YouTube, Graham went about her life—sticking to her “don’t read the comments” rule—but the feedback was so overwhelming that it was hard to ignore. “Feel like every Black woman can relate to this video. Especially when she broke down. It’s so much more than hair. It’s identity, culture, societal ‘worth.’ Very refreshing to see a woman with type 4 hair on Vogue,” one woman said, while another added “Her actual real hair would have complemented her role in the Vampire Diaries. Would love to see her in a role that would respect her natural self!”
Modern day Graham shared, “I hadn’t quite been prepared for the avalanche of reactions.” Now, she has a bit more clarity on the experience. “Black women were watching it, crying, white women were watching it crying. It became this symbolic video of owning yourself and being transparent. And that’s what can make you really powerful is to say, ‘Hey, listen, I was never accepted for who I am, but now I have the stage and this is who I am.’ ”
The actor only continued grow stronger in her journey of self discovery and love. “When Black women talk about hair, it’s really not just hair, it’s our identity. And there’s a famous James Brown song that’s like, ‘say it loud, I’m Black and I’m proud.’ But who you are is forever.”
