There was a time when celebrity beauty launches felt very copy and paste — like everyone was taking a stab at it. And while some weren’t even worth remembering, I have a feeling Cardi B’s Grow Good Hair line is going to hit differently.
The rapper recently teased the launch of her own haircare line— and honestly, it tracks. She’s been letting us in on her hair growth journey for a minute now — since 2016 to be exact. But as a curly-haired Dominican girl from NYC myself, this might be the first celebrity beauty line that makes me feel this seen.
For those of us who’ve followed Cardi’s 10-year hair growth journey, this launch isn’t a surprise. She’s been documenting her return to healthy hair on social media for years. I still remember when her Dominican DIY avocado hair mask went viral in 2020—she had everyone in the kitchen whipping it up, myself included.
It was similar to the recipe I grew up with: ripe avocado, honey, mashed banana, sometimes castor oil, and mayo. The only difference? My mom used olive oil instead of argan oil. It’s the same mask I made countless times while repairing my curls from heat damage—so I know it actually works.
Dominican women believe so deeply in DIY hair remedies that at nearly every salon I visited growing up, there was always at least one peluquera by the sinks mixing up an avocado mask, a mayo treatment, or a coffee-and-rosemary oil growth concoction for a client. They were incredibly resourceful, too—if they ran out of disposable shower caps, they’d cover a client’s hair with a plastic supermarket bag, just like the one Cardi wears in the promotional video.
“When I was younger, I really really used to hate my hair. Now that I’m older, I grew to love it, appreciate it, and it’s really part of me,” Cardi says in the promotional video that showcases her whole journey from the early days of repairing her hair to the behind-the-scenes of creating the new brand with cosmetic scientists.
As a Dominican girl with predominantly 3B curls—I say predominantly because, like most curly girls, I have a mix of textures—I felt every word Cardi said in that video. When I was younger, I hated my hair, too.
Before the early 2010s, if you grew up in a Dominican or Caribbean household, you weren’t encouraged to embrace your curls. I had my first blowout for my first birthday. At one year old, my soft, delicate curls were blown straight with a Dominican salon–style dryer blasting scorching hot air so I could be camera-ready for my birthday photos. It didn’t matter that my curls were considered “softer” or more manageable—within my community, anything that wasn’t straight or loosely wavy had to be tamed.
The pressure to keep my hair sleek and straight only intensified over the years, and the messaging was deeply conflicting. Dominican beauty culture revolves around hair—from the salons that shaped NYC’s beauty scene to the island-born treatments stocked at your local beauty supply store. Long, “healthy” hair was the standard—but the spoken rule was that it should be straight. So many of us grew up with curls that were anything but healthy: dry, brittle, fried from constant blowouts and flat-ironing, and sometimes damaged by chemical straightening treatments like derizados and keratin. As a child and teen, the only time I wore my curls was in the summer—when my blowouts couldn’t survive the humidity of NYC, Florida, or the Dominican Republic.
Cardi, like many Dominican, Afro-Latina, and Afro-Caribbean girls, likely felt the pressure to constantly heat-style her hair to keep it sleek and straight—and over time, that takes a toll on natural texture. While she still opts for straight and protective styles, we’ve seen over the years—and even in this teaser—that she’s regained her curls. They look healthy and strong, and when blown out, her hair flows all the way down her back.
In fact, Grow Good Beauty’s Instagram bio describes the brand as “Bronx-born haircare upgrading the classics with the latest science for booty-length certified hair, founded by @iamcardib.” What that likely means is that alongside innovative hair science, the products will probably include classic Dominican ingredients—avocado, rosemary, coffee, and honey—the staples many of us grew up using to encourage growth.
Cardi isn’t the first Dominican woman to launch a brand focused on treating and restoring textured hair. Pioneers like my friends Carolina Contreras of Miss Rizos, Lulu Cordero of Bomba Curls, known for her Dominican Forbidden Oil infused with coffee, rosemary, and castor oil; and sisters Cory and Nicol Varona of Ocoa Beauty, have already paved the way. But Cardi is the first Dominican celebrity to enter the space at this level—and here’s why that matters: The truth is, while we’ve come a long way from the days when curly-haired girls were told they had “pelo malo,” the emotional and cultural politics surrounding curly and coily hair in Dominican, Latine, and Caribbean households still run deep. We see traces of it even now.
There’s a reason Cardi may still feel more comfortable wearing her hair straight—whether it’s convenience or lingering expectations. Embracing our natural texture has only become widely accepted in our communities, and beyond, within the last decade or so. In fact, my third and final attempt at repairing my own curls was around 2016, when there was finally more education about textured hair, along with curl specialists and dedicated product lines. Before that, the options were slim—usually limited to a small “ethnic” or Black hair section tucked at the dark end of the drugstore’s haircare aisles.
As a result, many of us grew up internalizing the message that our hair was a problem. This healing journey is still relatively new for so many Dominican women—and for some, it hasn’t even begun. I know countless Dominican women, including my mom, my tias, and most of my primas, who only wear their hair straight and haven’t yet unpacked the emotions that surface when confronting the tension between the white beauty standards they were conditioned to assimilate to and true self-acceptance.
And while I don’t believe every Black woman or curly-haired Latina of African descent has to embrace a fully natural hair journey, there is something deeply healing and empowering about knowing you don’t have to straighten your rizos to be beautiful—or enough.
Cardi’s brand isn’t just another celebrity hair line—it’s a message rooted in love and community. It’s a reminder to every little Black girl and curly-haired Afro-Latina that your hair doesn’t have to be straight to be good. Healthy hair is good hair. And yes, even in 2026, we still need that message, and if it’s coming from someone with a platform as powerful as Cardi B—someone who can reach the mainstream—I’ll take it.