Hello everyone!
My name is Evelyne Adeyinka and I am in my final year of the Audio Visual Media program at the Utrecht School of the Arts. In the past 4 years I have been trained as a filmmaker and now the time has finally come: I have to graduate and that means that I am going to make a documentary.
In the past two years, it has occurred to me several times to make a documentary about afro hair and the entire culture surrounding it. I thought it would be fun to give people who know nothing about afro hair a glimpse into our way of doing things. Yet I didn't dare to give in completely. I knew deep down that my story would really have to be about the fact that many people with afro hair, including me, don't dare to show it. This was getting a bit too personal for me so I thought, never mind. For a month and a half I searched hard for another fun and non-personal subject but without success, afro hair kept floating around in my head. Eventually I really had to come to my teacher with a subject and this is how our conversation went:
“24 years ago I was born with a big head of frizzy hair that has been on my mind ever since I can remember. My sisters and I went to a ‘white’ primary school and were incredibly jealous of our classmates whose hair was so soft, so straight and so beautifully blowing in the wind. With our frizzy hair, we never, ever had that problem.”
My teacher burst out laughing, “Are you serious, I was never aware of that!” That makes sense if you don’t know people with frizzy hair, I let her know and continued with my story: “I was really pissed off and the fact that my (Dutch) mother had incredibly beautiful ringlets didn’t make me feel any better. Why didn’t I inherit those genes? Besides, she had no idea how to deal with her children’s wild frizzy hair and my (Nigerian) father even less! My half-sisters Coco and Veralyn had exactly the same thing. Their mother also had no idea how to take care of their hair. Whether it’s because we were never taught how to deal with our hair or whether it’s a deeper issue, I don’t know, but our hair has always been an issue! An eternal battle against what it really is: frizz.”
“But that frizzy part is so much fun, when you pull it, it bounces back so nicely.” my teacher tried to convince me. “Yes, it’s fun to pull it, but it’s not fun to have to comb out those eternal tangles with force! A while ago, my sister was a bit sad. She had taken out her weave but didn’t have the money to put in a new one, so she had to go out with her frizzy hair. She felt ugly and thought she looked like a boy. All I saw was that my beautiful sister looked fantastic, even though I understood very well how she felt.
For the first time it became clear to me what we were doing: actually presenting ourselves as something we are not, because we are ashamed of something that does not correspond to the Western ideal of beauty.”
Because I didn’t really support this topic myself, I had also written down a few other ideas. But because my teacher got so excited about the frizzy hair story, she ignored those ideas. “Evelyne, this is super interesting, I can totally imagine you doing each other’s hair!” Does it really have to be so personal that I have to put myself in the spotlight? Like: Hello everyone! I have frizzy hair and because I don’t think I’m beautiful with my natural hair, I straighten it! Then I make myself quite vulnerable, as a filmmaker.
The story will then have the goal that we should all be happy and especially be able to be happy with our natural curly hair. I know I would like that but can I?
I can at least try by making it a quest to love my natural hair. If we all find love for our natural hair again, maybe we can break that habit of hiding ourselves for once. And what could be better than being completely yourself!
My teacher is right, I can make something nice out of this that other people can also benefit from. After our conversation she called after me: “And then at the end of the documentary you have to get your hair frizzy again, a great process for your graduation!” Well… if only it were that easy…
With this blog I want to keep you regularly informed about the making process of my documentary. Tips and tricks are of course always welcome!
Greetings Evelyne