Photographs by: Eduardo Munoz/Reuters (Left), Kevin Mazur/Wireimage/Getty (Middle), Jason Reed/Reuters (Right)
On a particularly frigid winter afternoon, the steady stream of women who enter the Curl Ambassadors salon in downtown Toronto are greeted by a self-affirming mantra. The slogan scrawled in hot pink across the stylists’ black T-shirts, “Happy Being Me,” which, in this case, refers to embracing one’s naturally curly hair, is also reflected in the decor: above the front desk, a pair of vintage portraits showcase little girls with auburn waves; in the waiting area, a binder filled with curly styles, plucked from the pages of hair magazines, sits open for perusal. All of which, says co-owner Caroline Muir, whose red ringlets fall just below her chin, is intended to give the clientele, many of whom have for years straightened their curls, the confidence to stop wrestling with nature. As Lorraine Massey, the Manhattan-based stylist whose DevaCurl line of products is used at the salon, told Maclean’s, “We’re not born loving our hair. We have to truly fight and learn to love it.”
In a world where long, straight and sleek has for decades been upheld as the ideal of beauty, those born with curly hair have been abandoned by the mainstream. Not since the dying days of disco has big, curly hair been truly en vogue, and, as a result, the ability to cut and style naturally curly tresses was lost on (and for) a generation. Curly-haired women of all ethnicities have either submitted to expensive and time-consuming straightening techniques or risked the alternative: an endless series of bad haircuts and many bad hair days. But if the Curl Ambassadors’ popularity is any indication—demand prompted Muir and business partner Betty Di Salvo to open a second salon last year—this is no longer the case. Buoyed by an emerging subculture of women, united in their curl-care triumphs and defeats, natural ringlets, spirals and waves are making a comeback.
Part of what has kept natural curls under wraps, says Jonathan Torch, who has been styling curly hair in Toronto since the ’80s, is the general perception of it. “You always see it as frizzy and damaged,” he says. “It has the illusion of messy.” In fact, Western civilization has a long history of derision toward hair that appears to have a mind of its own. According to Greek mythology, Medusa could turn to stone anyone who dared lay eyes on her head of writhing serpents. The nefarious, sensual power of curls is also evident in our retelling of the story of Adam and Eve. As Penny Howell Jolly, an art history professor at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., observes in her essay “Dangerous Hair,” while Biblical accounts don’t discuss Eve’s hair, “artists frequently depict her with sinuous curls, alluding to the notion that Eve seduced Adam into sin.”
In certain industries, curly hair remains the object of scorn. Torch, who runs the Curly Hair Institute salon, says he has clients who work in TV, and “cannot wear their hair curly on air because they’re not taken seriously enough.”
Laura Atendido, 28, says she started fielding queries from classmates about her “fuzzy Afro” in Grade 2. “I didn’t like the questions about it, so I just tried to do whatever I could to bury it and kill it.” After more than two decades of maniacal flattening, using everything from baseball hats to the household iron (she refers to the burns she endured as “war wounds”), her resolve has only gotten stronger. Today, she adheres to a two-hour-long regimen, so arduous that she only wets her hair every third day. After using a round brush and blow-dryer on damp hair to stretch out and dry curls, she divides her hair into small sections. With a flatiron, she meticulously straightens each piece, before sealing the result with a shine spray, which also combats frizz. On off days, she monitors the weather obsessively. “Your life revolves around it,” she says.
Race can add yet another layer of complication. Charisse Jones, co-author of Shifting: The Double Lives of Black Women in America, explains that ever since black women first came to the U.S. as slaves in the 1600s, “we’ve been waging a kind of battle with our hair, covering it up with scarves and trying to figure out how to get it to mimic the hair of Europeans.” As a child, Jones recalls having her hair straightened with hot combs and oil heated on the kitchen stove, a memory she says “is quite literally seared into the minds and into the psyches of a lot of black women.”
Though the processes have become more sophisticated, they are no less consuming: in the U.S., black-hair care, everything from chemical relaxers to elaborate weaves, has grown into a billion dollar industry. As Bernard Bronner, president and CEO of Bronner Bros., Inc., points out in Chris Rock’s 2009 documentary Good Hair, “For certain products, we index triple what the white market does.” The Bronner Bros. International Hair Show, held twice annually in Atlanta, is attended by 120,000 hair professionals, pumping an estimated US$60 million into that city’s economy. As Rock puts it: “Good hair is good business.” During the civil rights movement of the 1960s, freeing one’s natural kinks became a symbol of subversion—the effects of which linger to this day. “If you wear locks, or your hair in a short Afro,” says Jones, “[people] might assume you’re militant or troublesome.”
The emerging cult of curl is a response to these negative perceptions—and the lack of understanding about how to cut and style naturally wild hair into a look that’s more Botticelli and less Medusa. Despite the fact that an estimated two-thirds of the population has some measure of wave, twist or kink to their hair, the vast majority of hairstylists still haven’t figured it out. “Our whole training is based on making it go away,” says Massey, who ironed out her thick auburn mane of curls until the ’80s. “It’s all about imposing upon it, making it change.”
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