Black power gets kinky
Bruna Aparecida smiled cautiously at her reflection as a hairdresser snipped the last strands of her straight hair. Her head was crowned with curls.
“I didn’t know myself without straight hair,” said Aparecida, 27, who used chemical relaxers for nearly a decade before deciding to go natural. She used to be the only Black woman at the bank where she works who had kinky hair. Today, she is one of six.
“It’s all the rage this year. Many of my friends are doing it,” she said.
Black and brown Brazilians make up more than half of the population, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at the beauty industry. Brazil’s innovative hair straightening treatments, sold around the world, have long chased white standards of beauty. Ten years ago, it was not unusual to find robed women packed into a room at a salon, covering their mouths with rags to avoid inhaling fumes while hairdressers doused their locks in formaldehyde for a pin-straight look. Now, Black Brazilians are embracing their curls.
The resurgence of natural hair has mirrored a rise in Black empowerment. The number of Brazilians identifying as Black grew 15 per cent in four years, according to the 2016 census. Meanwhile, inspired by the movie Black Panther, Afrofuturism, a movement that explores a futuristic vision of Africa and the African diaspora, has taken off, with movies, plays and music featuring black protagonists.
Yet racial inequality here remains stark. The average salary for a white citizen is nearly 50 per cent higher than for a Black citizen. Black and brown Brazilians made up 70 per cent of the country’s murder victims in 2016, according to the most recent government data. Earlier this year, the assassination of Black Rio councilwoman Marielle Franco sparked a debate about racism and police brutality.
In this context, the Afro has emerged as a symbol of resistance. The Black beauty market has been growing 20 per cent a year in Brazil, helped by products geared toward women transitioning to more natural looks, according to Kline Market Research Group.
Online searches for “Afro hair” have tripled here in the past two years, according to Google Labs. #CabeloCrespo, a “kinky hair” hashtag once used on photos of straightening makeovers, now generates thousands of images of billowy Afros.
“I had no idea of the size of the market when I opened my salon,” said Almiro Nunes, 44, owner of Curls Clinic, a parlour in São Paulo that specializes in naturally curly hair. Nunes, who started with 10 clients eight years ago, sees an average of 60 clients a day.
It’s not just the salons that seem to have gotten the memo. Pharmacies and department stores that used to primarily stock shampoos for white clients now have whole sections dedicated to natural black hair.