Every morning, a few thousand girls and women across India follow a routine. They undo the ‘pineapple’ or remove the silk cloth wrapped around their heads. With hair flipped over or parted into sections, they spend a few minutes wetting it, raking in products, scrunching and pumping and using the ‘praying hands method’. Once done, the hair is air dried or diffused. Later in the day, another few minutes will be spent scrunching out the ‘cast’.
If half the words above sound unfamiliar, it’s because they are in a language spoken by a select group of people. They’re part of a curly girl’s lifestyle or, if you prefer its official name, the Curly Girl Method or #CGMethod or CGM. But, if you are a curly girl like me, chances are that you practise this routine or some variation of it, daily.
The revolutionary styling method and haircare regimen, for people with either curly or wavy hair and everything in between, was introduced by hairstylist Lorraine Massey in her bestselling book, Curly Girl: The Handbook, in 2002. Now, her techniques have spread across the globe, spawning curly girl communities, curls-only salons and bloggers who share videos, shot in bathrooms, of their CG tips and tricks.
In India, much of the movement can be credited to a determined ex-software engineer, Asha Barrak. Online, she is Right Ringlets and one of the first bloggers to acquaint Indian women with products and styling for curly hair. She created the Facebook group Indian Curl Pride, to bring together a community of curly girls, and this year, she launched the first curly hair brand in India, Ash:ba Botanics. Its been an impressive journey for a girl who was raised in a household that didn’t use shampoo.
Starting a movement
This story is from the August - September 2019 edition of Verve.
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This story is from the August - September 2019 edition of Verve.
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