Playing sisters
Serena Mani, 22, and Layla Pitt, 24, are best friends who work at The Curly Bar, a hair salon exclusively for curly hair. As told to Frances Morton.
OUR FIRST MEETING
Serena: She was a year ahead of me at uni so we met officially at a party.
Layla: It was an initiation party in the first week, where we initiated the new group in. Kind of ritualistic, kind of dramatic, kind of cringe. We did a chant. The lights were on and one by one the new students would walk in then we’d yell their name and they’d take a shot and we’d be like “welcome to the school”.
S: The chant was from Finding Nemo.
L: The Sharkbait chant.
S: I was kind of drunk and approached her. I said that she was really pretty.
L: I am one of those people that if I think you’re really cool I’m not going to go talk to you because I’m scared. I said: “Yo, she’s talking to me, that’s sick.” Then we just instantly vibed. I remember you started crying and I had just met you, after two minutes. I was wiping her tears with toilet paper going, “It’s OK.”
S: I don’t remember why I was crying.
L: I do. You said: “I’m just so happy to meet another pretty brown girl.”
S: Yeah, because uni is very white washed. I grew up in Auckland but I moved here when I was young from Fiji.
L: I was born in London and I moved here with my parents when I was 4 to Hawke’s Bay, and then as soon as I could get out of that hellhole I moved here and started studying. In Hawke’s Bay, especially where I grew up in Havelock North, I was the pinnacle of diversity. It’s not a very nice inclusive place. People are really racist. I didn’t feel like a human until I moved to Auckland.
THE BEST FRIEND BOND
L: For me, you have close friends you vibe with and you love them, but for me a best friend is someone you can actually tell them anything and you don’t feel they’re going to judge you. You can take the piss out of everything, and everything’s funny. Even if you’re not similar, you complement each other. I never get sick of her and we live together, work together, went to uni together. And I’m not a very tolerant person. It’s been almost five years.
S: I’ve never had a best friend before. I feel I was always part of a crew with best friends in it, but I feel I didn’t have those intense relationships with people. So it’s quite strange to have that this time. There has definitely been conflict, for sure. We just talk things through. If there is a conflict we bring it up and get each other’s perspective on it.
L: Even if you’re the person in the wrong, or vice versa, it’s discussing it in a way that’s not degrading or argumentative. It’s more, I see why you may have done that without realising and I get that, but thanks for saying sorry.
S: Our favourite thing to do is just hanging out. Sometimes we cancel plans to hang out to watch Netflix.
L: We play a multiplayer game together, open world, where we have two characters that are sisters. We kill everyone and game stuff. It’s getting your rage out. Hanging out with Serena makes mundane things that I’m not really looking forward to fun. Even just yesterday, we were going to buy vape juice and we bought a wardrobe at the opshop. And I hate op-shopping. I hate looking, and trying to scour. At least I thought I did, until I went with her.
HAIR AND NOW
S: The Curly Bar is a salon that’s been open for about eight months. The difference is we only do curly or wavy hair. If it’s got a tension to it. It’s plastic-freeand very conscious of giving back to the black community or other curlies, no matter what race they are, and reminding them that the European beauty standard that we’ve been plagued with for so long is not the only way to look beautiful. You can be beautiful with your natural hair. It’s really nice to empower women to just love themselves. We teach them how to keep it so they don’t have to rely on us to feel beautiful. It’s in their hands. [Filming the documentary Hair Now] was a really awesome experience to be able to share, especially being transgender and when I had body hair it was so dysphoric. It’s something that I’m still working through. It made me think a lot about why I keep certain hair or get rid of it and realise that some parts are actually normal and are not making me feel dysphoric. Working through the ideas around it and what I’ve been taught to feel about my body versus how I feel about my body hair as well. It was a really insightful documentary to be a part of.
FORMING FAMILIES
S: I’m not super close to my family but I am really close with her family. They are so sweet so I feel like I do have that support.
L: They emotionally adopted her. They visited Auckland recently and we were having low-key drinks with close friends so they could meet my parents. My parents aren’t normal. They are really cool. There’s authority and they’re great parents, but they’re also good friends. I tell them everything. They’re just chill. They finally got to hang out with Serena and they said: “Yup, we’re adopting her.”