The first time Tatyana Joseph could recall seeing someone on television with her texture like hers was the High School Musical actor, Corbin Bleu.

“I’m not even being dramatic,” she confesses to RoyalTee in an exclusive interview.  “I really was like, ‘Oh, my God is that like our long-lost brother or something like I’ve never seen that before.”

Her struggles with her hair started as a young girl. Growing up in a military family, who did not particularly look like her, led to a lot feelings of anxiety, displacement, and a slight case of an identity crisis.

“I felt like I didn’t really belong,” she recalls.  “I started to pay attention to people’s comments about me like, ‘oh, yeah, your hair is kind of out of control, you could like tame that fro a little bit.’  Things like that, that just seem kind of subliminal… like, wow, is this something that just people see of me?”

Throughout her childhood, her mother would braid her hair into two pigtails until one day Joseph asked her to do something different and straighten her hair.

She added, “I was having a big, self-aware moment of just I don’t like how much I don’t like myself, I wish I was more confident. I wish I could walk out more proudly in my own skin. Like I just really hated not liking my reflection. I was like, I’m tired of this, like, this is me, like what’s wrong with me. Like, I feel like that shouldn’t happen.”

In her freshman year of high school, Joseph began her self-love journey to change her own narrative, which included paying more attention to herself and seeing the better parts, before self-bashing, starting with her hair. Soon what she would humorously refer to as a “giant dome” on her head became a crown.

“This is my hair,” she recalls about her realization.  “I’m gonna learn how to rock it, I’m gonna learn how to make it do what I want it to do, I’m gonna try to fit styles, I’m gonna just explore.”

“I was having a big, self-aware moment of just I don’t like how much I don’t like myself, I wish I was more confident.”

Today, the 21-year-old influencer’s personal story has led her to becoming one of the many melanin staples of representation, authenticity, and beauty for many Black girls, from the U.S. to South Africa. With over 4.5 million followers on TikTok alone and nearly 600K on Instagram, her down-to-earth persona, humor, and relatability makes her an instant favorite among the Gen Z trending list.

She uses her platforms to post natural hair care and make-up tutorials geared toward people of color. Further securing her brand, this past month, she recently launched her own hoodie collection, the Joseph Hoodie Collective. But her core and main passion will always be hair positivity and self-love.

“Remind yourself that you were you beautifully God made you this way, like stop judging yourself,” she says. “And I just had so many moments like that, while doing my hair that eventually I was just really starting to see the beauty within myself.”

Check out more of our interview with Tatyana in our spring edition of RoyalTee Gen, coming out in April 2023.