Kenza is an author, columnist, teacher and producer. She slashes valiantly between all these activities, and here she gives us the keys to her mantra: "Power is in the Hair"!
I'm lucky enough to have very ambitious hair, but I didn't always realize it. Pushing towards the ground never interested them, they always aimed for the stars. While we've had a complex relationship over the years and through fads, my hair mass has always been a central and singular part of me. We just had to understand a few things to get along:
1/ don't try to decide my hairstyle, my hair does it for me;
2/ invent, tinker, tinker with your own beauty rituals for your curls;
3/ don't try to comb your hair at night before going to sleep like Wendy in Peter Pan, otherwise you'll wake up looking like Angela Davis;
4/ mourn the loss of dynamic ponytails; in another life perhaps...
5/ beware of hairdressers like the plague;
6/ to realize the political significance of a free hair in the public space;
Hair as a political object is perhaps a debate we've grown tired of in the United States, a faraway land where the "nappy" live happily on Instagram [editor's note: the nappy movement is the French name for the "natural hair movement", which was born in the United States in the 2000s, and which refers to black women who wish to keep their frizzy hair], but on this side of the Atlantic it's a completely different story. If the ardor of Myriam Fares [editor's note: Lebanese singer with curly hair] has undoubtedly helped to de-dramatize the curl among a generation raised on the Pantene pro-V bottle, we Mediterranean women from the South, from the North, are still subjected to a definition of beauty that does not resemble us.
Double, stuck between European and Arab criteria, these converge on the same definition of hair beauty: straight, smooth and silky hair, preferably long. As women with non-straight hair, we were taught that our natural version was not acceptable in society, that our hair was never really styled, that it didn't look serious at work, that it had to be straightened for a wedding and so on. So we plated, tied, ironed, straightened, brushed, straightened, Japanese style, Brazilian style, keratin style...
If the Pantene ads still work on my grandmother, who regularly asks me if it would be better if I straightened my hair
If the Pantene ads still work on my grandmother, who regularly asks me if it would be better if I straightened my hair "to have peace" - or rather so that she would have peace, it is certain that things have changed a lot since I was 15 years old. In the media, movies and especially music videos, but also in supermarkets with finally products dedicated to the maintenance of our hair which, behind their invasive appearance, are actually very fragile. Nowadays, curls are worn more and more, and little girls with curly hair don't necessarily have to wear their hair tied up anymore.
