SPEAKER_01: TED Audio Collective.
SPEAKER_03: It's TED Talks Daily. I'm Elise Hu. Hair. It's pretty astonishing how much time we spend doing our hair, thinking about our hair, or removing hair from our bodies. In her 2023 talk from TED Women, hair sculptor Leticia Cai shares another way to think about hair.
As an art form.
After the break.
Support for TED Talks Daily comes from Capital One Bank. With no fees or minimums, banking with Capital One is the easiest decision in the history of decisions. Even easier than deciding to listen to another episode of your favorite podcast.
And with no overdraft fees, is it even a decision?
That's banking reimagined. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See capitalone.com slash bank Capital One NA member FDIC.
TED Talks Daily is brought to you by Progressive. Progressive helps you compare direct auto rates from a variety of companies so you can find a great one, even if it's not with them. Quote today at progressive.com to find a rate that works with your budget. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Comparison rates not available in all states or situations.
SPEAKER_01: Like TED Talks? You should check out the TED Radio Hour with NPR. Stay tuned after this talk to hear a sneak peek of this week's episode.
SPEAKER_00: I was born and I grew up in the Ivory Coast. And like so many other African kids, I used to resent my blackness, including my hair. I longed for straight hair that could be easily managed and brushed.
After years of using air relaxer, I went back to natural hair at 16 after an incident with my hair that forced me to shave and start over.
And it was a very hard new beginning.
But at 18, while I was still in the process of learning how to love my natural hair, I came across a photo album showing the hair of African women in pre-colonial society and I was instantly inspired. Seeing that photo album was so powerful to me.
It made me see air completely differently, not just as a beauty tool, but as a way to communicate and to tell stories about who we are.
And immediately, I started to experiment with my own hair.
I wanted to see what I was able to create. And today, I'm an artist and air sculpting is one of my media.
I use my heart to advocate for what I believe in, particularly for issues that affect women and girls. But it didn't start that way. At the beginning, I was just doing beautiful shapes for the aesthetic aspects. I started with doing simple geometrical shapes just for the beauty of it.
And when I was posting those shapes online, I was receiving so much love that it encouraged me to push my limit to create more complex sculptures. From 2017, when I first started, until now, I made hundreds of sculptures.
Some can be playful, others can be very serious.
So here are just a few examples of what I can do with my hair. Animals.
Random things like an umbrella or a car.
Portraits.
Texts, like here, where I write process with my hair because I do believe my hair is perfect.
Cartoon.
Sunflowers.
Fashion accessories.
Wings.
Even zodiac-inspired hairstyle because my raising sign is Scorpio. I'm another astrology freak.
Medusa.
And even body parts.
The process to make those sculptures is actually pretty simple. The idea comes to my head, I do a little sketch, and then I just sculpt using my natural hair, some hair extension, and wire. I just wrap the bread around the wire and then it's very easy for me to shape as I want. And in general, you know, to make the sculpture being able to stand on top of my head, the base needs to be extremely tight.
So if you're wondering, is it earthful? Yes.
Yes, it is. But this is why in general I quickly under it after the photo shoot.
Most of the time I will take the picture by myself, but when I need help, my little sister Francia, who is the most supportive person on the planet, will help me.
And depending on what I want to create, a sculpture can take me from five minutes to more than three, four, five hours.
When I started to create, I was just doing, as I said before, for the beauty of it. No meanings. But it changed in 2018 when one of my photo series went completely viral. I shaped my hair as a second pair of hands, very playful in various configurations, and I started to receive a lot of messages from black women around the world telling me that seeing my heart helped them to feel better about their hair, about their blackness.
And I realized, okay, actually what I'm doing is pretty powerful. So maybe it can just serve a greater purpose, and I can use it to advocate for change. So I decided to use my hair as a platform to advocate for the equity of sexes. Why this specific subject, we may ask? Because I was born and I grew up in an environment that normalized the bad treatment of women.
I have my experience, many women have their experience, so it touched me a lot.
And when it comes to equality of sexes, I touch a lot of different subjects. Body autonomy and self-love is very important for me. I went myself into a long process of towards self-love coming from a place where I used to dislike everything about myself to a place where I just love everything. So I love to inspire myself from our female body to create sculpture and shapes that are associated with uplifting words to empower those who need it.
And with the sculpture, what I want to do is to encourage women to have agency over their body, but also to destigmatize all the classic taboo around our bodies. Like for example, period, aging, disabilities, and much more.
When I was 15, I posted a photograph of me on social media without realizing that my body, my armpit hair was visible and immediately the comments were wild.
This is disgusting! Go shave! Ew, I can buy you a razor if you want! I was traumatized, so I deleted the picture and after that I started to shave way more regularly, even if for me it's a very uncomfortable routine. It took me years to be able to love my body the way it is and to embrace everything, including my body hair.
Besides all the topics related to bodies, I love to also address topics related to our intellect as women,
because this world not only encourages women to dislike their body, but also encourages women to dislike what they have inside.
And I think just as we're supposed to love our bodies, we're supposed to also own our hopes, dreams, our ideas, our opinions without shame. And for that I think education is extremely important.
SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately, in Ivory Coast many women still can't read.
When I was a child, many women were working at home as nannies. They weren't educated. They would ask me to read the text messages because they couldn't. In rural Ivory Coast, many parents think that it's useless to put a girl in school because they're better at home learning how to cook, how to take care of their own for their future husband.
But when it comes to their son, they are allowed to have an education.
So most of the time, those women will end up marrying older men, and when those men abandon them, they are left with nothing, with very few career options, because they are not educated. And to me this is revolting.
Growing up in an environment where I wasn't always encouraged to love who I was, my journey has been about becoming my own friend and advocate. And when I embraced the capacity I have to share my stories and the one of others, I found the strength to advocate for what I believe in through my hair. Thank you.
SPEAKER_02: As the Taliban came back to power, Shabana Rasidj-Rossach managed to evacuate her entire school of girls to Rwanda.
Four days later, August 29th, is when we resumed classes for our students.
What leadership looks like, even when you're forced to flee your country.
That's next time on the TED Radio Hour from NPR. Subscribe or listen to the TED Radio Hour wherever you get your podcasts.
