Jamelia says dramatic haircut was like a ‘rebirth’

Jamelia has said that she is “so much more” than her hair.

The singer and actress chopped off her locks in January last year, posting the video on Instagram.

“I’d become synonymous with my hair. I just felt like I’m so much more than that,” Jamelia told the PA news agency, discussing why she chopped it off.

“I’m so much more than my hair or a black woman with Afro hair. And even without it, I’m still worth something.”

Jamelia – who plays Sharon Bailey on Hollyoaks and recently reached the final five on Celebrity MasterChef – said: “Maybe I was going through something at the time, but I just knew that it was like a rebirth for me. And weirdly, it took less than a year for my hair to get back to the length it was when I cut it. The length that took five years to grow.

“It was literally just for me. I didn’t want the hair from the previous Jamelia to come with me.”

Jamelia said she wore her hair in various styles growing up – she had dreadlocks until she was seven, and three years later her hair was relaxed – a chemical treatment that straightens curly hair (also known as a perm for black hair) – before she joined a predominately white secondary school.

“Dreadlocks are an incredible celebration of your hair in its most natural form. My hair was left to just be. I didn’t have the neat dreadlocks you usually see nowadays, but they were long and my mum would do styles with them,” she said.

“I can understand why my mum relaxed my hair. My secondary school was a specialist school for technically minded children, so it was quite prestigious. It was about conforming and not sticking out too much. I think it’s why…