“Ese Pelo Tuyo”
has been awarded a spot at the 2019 AFS
“Storytelling for Social Impact Workshop”
“Ese Pelo Tuyo” is a transmedia story telling experience, one which is build by afro-descendent women that potentially come from any where in the world and with a wide age range. “Ese Pelo Tuyo” is a platform where there is story-telling, sharing and learning about afro-descendent women’s hair. A collective manifiesto is build upon this whole experience; which goes beyond esthetics because involves working, health, politics, identity, racism, and history related issues.
“Ese Pelo Tuyo” pretends to stimulate the connection between different and diverse black women. So that they can share, discuss and learn from their different stories and experiences around their hair. In this manner they would build up an online community. In the same way it pretends to show the great diversity that exists among black women and therefore that they are not a one face, monolithic community. Contrary to the representation that in many cases is display by the media. Uncovering that this missed representation mostly corresponds to historically created stereotypes or to the esthetic canons accepted as “good” and “beautiful” (Such as straighten their hair to be socially validated, because in such manner it emulates white standards).
“…when I endured all of that pain, literally burning my flesh to have it look like a white man’s hair. I had joined that multitude of Negro men and women in America who are brainwashed into believing that the black people are “inferior” —and white people “superior”— that they will even violate and mutilate their God-created bodies to try to look “pretty” by white standards.” Shabazz, Malcom; Haley, Alex.
The “Ese Pelo Tuyo” project starts with a video-blog which includes media content (Audio, video and text). All this content revolves around a central theme axis: Black Women’s hair. In this video-blog many and different black women are able to share videos, audios, photographs and texts, that tell stories about their hairs. All this content comes from a basic simple question: -Why do you wear your hair like that?-.
This video-blog will be not only an open space for black women and their stories. It will be also a vehicle to teach the general public about the differences between them and black women. What it means to be a black women with a particular kind of hair and how this represents diversity. This is a different kind of esthetics and a different beauty concept in its own right.
