EFinally a book in French on the maintenance of natural frizzy hair. Crépue et Re-Belle invites you to discover the author and her book through a short interview.
CRB! : A book, a girl… Miss Grain de Poivre, who are you?
Miss Grain de Peivre: The last time I had my hair straightened was in 1998. It wasn't long before my hair started to break. It was impressive and very depressing. That year, I decided that I would never get straightened again, especially since it was not the first time that this kind of mishap had happened to me. It was not easy to stay true to my promise. I made myself buns, braids, vanilla, a ponytail, two big cabbages.
Obviously, sometimes I had a furious desire to follow fashion, to have the hairstyles I saw in magazines and on TV done. Except that most of the time, they are hairstyles for Caucasian hair, so the opposite of mine.
About three years ago, I started surfing the net to see if there were any sites devoted to the subject after I came across, by some chance, a “Bworld connection” program devoted to Juliette Smeralda, a sociologist, who had written an amazing book. The title was inspired by that of Frantz Fanon's book, “Black skin, white mask” which became “Black skin, frizzy hair, the story of an alienation”. It was a kind of revelation, an awareness. Staying natural just to avoid damaging my hair with a caustic product took on another meaning. It was accepting myself as I was without trying to transform myself to be like someone else.
I observed more attentively my friends, my aunts, my cousins, the women, the girls, the little colored girls in the street, in the subway. I observed the condition of their scalp, hair, wigs, extensions, and wondered how they saw themselves. A priori, we wear a wig when we have been the victim of cancer following chemotherapy. However, for several generations of women, the act of hiding their hair or transforming it has become commonplace and a symbol of beauty.
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