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Business & Tech

Women at War With Their Curls, Author Demonstrates

Lorraine Massey, author of the new book 'Curly Girl: A Handbook,'comes to Studio City to show how to straighten up.

In an era of anti-bullying public service messages and Lady GaGa’s brazen messages of empowerment, it may come as a surprise to learn that a majority of women still live in the closet.

Fearful of ridicule, determined to blend in unnoticed, they go to painstaking lengths to repress a part of themselves that is as intrinsic as their blood type or sexual orientation.  Women everywhere are at war with their own curly hair.

 According to Lorraine Massey, author of the new book Curly Girl: A Handbook and co-owner of the upscale Devachan Salon, 65 percent of women have curly or wavy hair, but most fight a daily battle to smooth it into submission.

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In an effort to conform to a society that reveres straight hair, have turned the tools of oppression—blow dryers, flat irons and chemical straighteners—on themselves. Massey’s mission as the leader of the pro-curl revolution is to convince women who’ve imprisoned their own curls to surrender these “weapons of mass hair destruction” and set their hair free.

Don’t let the military metaphors fool you—talking with Massey feels more like talking with a psychologist or spiritual counselor than a four-star general.  At the heart of her crusade is her belief that a woman’s hair is symbolic of her entire being. To flat iron her curls is to flat iron her soul.

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 Curly Girl: A Handbook is Massey’s blueprint for curly girls who want to embrace their true curly selves. On March 11, Massey will be in Studio City at the to talk about the book, answer questions and sign copies. She’ll also be doing on-the-spot demonstrations.

Fully revised from the original version published in 2001, this expanded edition is the definitive bible for transforming dry, frizzy hair into jealousy-inspiring ringlets. It’s also a self-help book and manifesto of Massey’s belief that people with curls are often victims of discrimination and considered inferior to people with straight hair.

“Curly hair is treated like a symptom, something to be fixed. Or worse, like a disability,” she says.

The book is full of stories of anti-curl bias. One woman who had finally come to treasure her curls went on a mock job interview during her senior year in college. The interviewer, a man, offered no constructive feedback on her responses to his questions. His only comment was about her hair.

“For your real interviews, straighten your hair,” he said. “Curly hair is unprofessional.”

Early in her own career, after she moved to Los Angeles from her native England, Massey received some unsolicited, career-related hair advice. She’d started working at an exclusive Beverly Hills salon, while the owner was away on vacation.  They didn’t meet until he returned a week later.

As soon as he saw her he shouted, “Someone blow-dry that girl’s hair now!” 

Unfortunately, Massey says, that salon owner’s reaction is representative of the role the hair care industry has played in the disenfranchisement of curly girls.  In a world where only straight hair is seen as beautiful, most hairdressers don’t value curls or understand how to work with them. They are taught to “fix” curly hair by blowing it straight, ironing it, dousing it with chemicals, or replacing it with wigs and weaves.

This hasn’t always been the case with curly hair. Massey points out that on a recent trip to a museum, she spent time looking at old paintings, and noticed that just about every female figure had curls or waves. Effective hair straightening technologies emerged only in the last two decades, creating an appetite for straight hair that didn’t exist in the days of da Vinci, Renoir and Picasso. 

The entertainment industry has embraced the new status quo so enthusiastically that that it’s rare to see women in the spotlight let their naturally curly locks shine. Even when celebrities with natural curls do wear curly styles, Massey says their hair has endured a double dose of heat-induced trauma—it’s blow dried and then styled with a curling iron.

This is the only way most hairdressers know how to work with curly hair, so there are few options offered to stars when they go to get styled. Massey tells of one celebrity she consulted with who made a decision to go curly for good. Soon afterwards, she appeared at an awards show sans curls, likely under the influence of a curl-phobic stylist.

The collateral damage of the war on curls goes beyond dehydrated, heat-fried hair. Keeping curls in exile requires an arsenal of expensive styling tools and treatments that can also dry up the bank account.

Paradoxically, the look of artificially straightened hair often sabotages a woman’s efforts to be beautiful. Massey sees a lot of women with unnaturally stick straight hair that works against their natural features, flattening their face and making wrinkles more pronounced.  Massey sees women everywhere with straightened hair that has backfired on them, making them look older and less vibrant.

Most importantly, being in curl denial can stifle a woman’s personality, because it means she is rejecting a core part of herself.

“Every day,” she says sadly, “women come into my salon so afraid to face their curls and themselves, to acknowledge that by straightening their hair they are trying to be someone who they are not. When I finally get them to let the curls loose, they can’t believe how good they feel about themselves.”

Massey knows from experience that the psychological element of curl denial is real. Growing up with a head full of corkscrew curls that made her the object of incessant teasing, she felt inferior and ugly. She obsessed about having straight hair, which ultimately led to her decision to be a hairdresser. 

The first few years of her early adulthood were spent blow drying her hair and wearing it short to keep it under control. Finally, after a particularly disastrous haircut, a boy she had a crush on delivered a brutal insult that changed her life – and hair—forever.

“You look like a baboon’s backside.”

In the book, Massey compares this moment to an addict bottoming out. She realized by resisting her curls, she was making herself miserable. She started letting her hair grow, and as it spiraled down her back she became determined to learn everything she could about the proper care of curly hair. The expertise she developed on her own ringlets formed the basis for the book.

If he saw her today, that boy would eat his heart out. Massey’s angelic mane of corkscrew curls is the best advertisement for  Curly Girl: A Handbook.

But the techniques Massey shares in the book are just one part of the equation.  Women must want to get in touch with—pardon the pun—their curly roots.  Like Massey, just about every one of her clients experienced traumatic childhood teasing that led them to, almost literally, extinguish their curls out of shame. Acknowledging this shame and getting to the real cause of curl denial is the first step toward restoring sanity to both head and hair.

Her book is peppered with first person accounts of her clients’ personal struggles coming to terms with their tresses. The healing process can be so psychologically difficult that Massey says she often feels like an addiction counselor.

“Women are so addicted to the idea of having straight hair because that’s what they learned was normal as children, so they can’t see the damage done by blow dryers and chemicals," she said. "Everyone except them can see how fried and unhealthy their hair looks. It’s very much like drug or alcohol abuse.”

Massey also equates curly hair to an abused child, born to women who lack the support or knowledge to properly care for it. But she says it’s never too late to heal the damage.

 “Curly hair is very forgiving. Like a child, no matter what we’ve done to it, it just wants to be loved and cared for.”

Massey says that there will be “locks to talk about” when she visits the Capella Salon on March 11, and she jokes that her events often feel like support groups. Women are very closed off at first, resistant to the idea of giving up the straight life. But as they hear Massey talk and begin to share the painful experiences that forced them to go into hiding, they begin to open up and a catharsis takes place. They finally see the weapons of mass hair destruction for what they are – agents of self-destruction.

Most importantly, they come away with knowledge on how to nourish and love their curls unconditionally, for life.

As Massey likes to say “Straighten you hair and you might be happy for a day. Learn to love and care for your curls and you’ll be happy for life.”

Ladies, the war is over. Put down your weapons and show us your curls.

 

Lorraine Massey will be at the on Friday, at 6 p.m. Click for more details.

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