Think back to your childhood and try to remember a French actress or singer you saw on television with her natural kinky hair. Most women who grew up in France in the 1990s can only think of one name, or often none at all.
Things have changed, more slowly than we might think and not just thanks to social media. Here are five French figures whose relationship with kinky hair is established by their public work, what French law has begun to say about it, and what wearing your afro requires once the initial enthusiasm has passed. On this last point, our step-by-step tutorial details the six steps of the Rituel Texture®.
The lack of role models is not a vague memory
A little girl doesn't think to herself that she lacks role models. She simply notices that the hair she sees on screen doesn't behave like hers—that it falls, that it moves, while hers does something else. Lacking any counterexample, she reaches the simplest conclusion: her hair is the problem. It is this silent reasoning, repeated throughout childhood, that explains why so many women aged 35 to 55 took years to return to natural hair.
References existed, but they came from elsewhere. An entire generation of French women grew up with American faces as their only role models, and with little or nothing that resembled their own lives, their own cities, or their own language. The lack was not a lack of Black beauty: it was a lack of familiarity.
I experienced this void from the other side. When I arrived in France, I was the only person in my class with kinky hair, and I was asked why my hair looked that way and why I wore beads. My mother continued to style my hair carefully so that I would arrive at school well-groomed, and my teachers complimented her work. I eventually turned it into a strength.
Ghana Elin, founderFive French figures who wear their afro
Celebrity lists circulate widely and are copied without being checked. Here, we stick to women whose connection to the subject is public and documented: a book, a film, a statement made in an interview and dated. None of them have any connection to our company, and we offer neither advice nor routines: we report what they have made public themselves.
Aïssa Maïga
Born in Dakar in 1975, this French actress and filmmaker has appeared in public for years with her natural kinky hair. Above all, she has made representation a central part of her work. She directed Noire n'est pas mon métier, a collection of sixteen Black and mixed-race actresses published by Seuil in 2018, which was selected for the Cannes Film Festival with her the same year, and then co-directed the documentary Regard noir, released in 2021, about the place of Black women on screen.
Rokhaya Diallo
A journalist and author, she devoted an entire book to natural hair in France. Afro!, published by Les Arènes in November 2015 with photographer Brigitte Sombié, brings together 110 portraits of Parisians who have stopped relaxing or straightening their hair, each accompanied by their story. It is one of the few French documents to show, side by side, the true variety of textures and reasons for returning to natural hair. The book is still available from its publisher.
Inna Modja
The Bamako-born artist arrived on the French music scene in the late 2000s with a voluminous afro that no one had asked her to round off. In an interview given to the website Afrik.com in November 2011, she described the reaction her hairstyle provoked, summarized by a question that kept coming from the audience: “But who is this Black girl with her huge afro?” She answered in a single sentence that remains the best conclusion to this paragraph: “I don't see myself changing my look just to please others.”
Assa Sylla
Born in Paris in 1996, the actress was discovered in Céline Sciamma's Bande de filles, released in 2014, a role that earned her a César nomination. We then saw her in Skam France, and later in Mortel. Her generation did not have to demand a place: she arrived with her texture, without making a statement about it, and that may be the clearest change from one decade to the next.
Mati Diop
A French-Senegalese filmmaker born in Paris in 1982, she was the first Black woman to present a film in the official competition at Cannes with Atlantique, which won the Grand Prix in 2019. Her documentary Dahomey, about France's restitution of works looted from the former kingdom, won the Golden Bear in Berlin in 2024. She belongs to that category of public figures whose texture is never the subject, which, for a young viewer, sometimes matters more than a speech.
What French law has begun to say
Representation is not just a matter of screens. It also plays out in job interviews, in company rules, and in comments made in open-plan offices. A bill aimed at recognizing and penalizing hair discrimination, championed by Guadeloupean deputy Olivier Serva, was adopted on first reading by the National Assembly on March 28, 2024, and then sent to the Senate the same day.
Since then, the Senate has not included it on its agenda. The text is therefore not in force, and it is important to say so clearly rather than letting people believe otherwise: such a situation is now covered by general anti-discrimination law, which already protects people on the grounds of physical appearance and origin.
Nevertheless, it did have an effect, and that effect did not depend on the Senate. It gave a name to something many women experienced without a word to describe it: straightening their hair before an interview, tucking their braids into a bun on Monday, or being told that their hair would look neater tied up.
Wondering whether your hairstyle will be accepted before wondering whether you like it: that is the calculation, repeated over and over, that the term “hair discrimination” has made visible.
Wearing your afro every day
Between the initial desire and maintaining it over time, there is a routine, and it is shorter than we might think. The Rituel Texture® is done every 7 to 10 days and begins with detangling with a Chadian finger, using your fingers and dry hair, section by section. It is not detangling dry hair that causes breakage: it is a comb passed through dry hair without product. The comb comes later, on lengths coated with the Masque Réparateur.
Next comes protective drying with a hairdryer, after applying La Crème Coiffante to the entire length, in small sections and with constant movement. This is the step that gives an afro its shape and volume, far better than a comb held at the roots on dry hair. At night, a silk scarf and a silk pillowcase are enough to preserve the day's work and avoid having to start over the next morning.
Between routines, resist the urge to wet your hair to revive its shape. It feels good, and it gives the impression of rehydrating, but that is precisely what fatigues the hair fiber over time. Also see our nighttime hairstyles and our article on hydrating kinky hair.
What fatigues an afro worn naturally
- Combing it dry and without product to gain volume.
- Tying it tightly in the same place every day.
- Sleeping on a cotton pillowcase without a silk scarf.
- Wetting your hair every morning to give it shape again.
- Spacing out treatments because it “holds on its own.”
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Sources
- Rokhaya Diallo and Brigitte Sombié, Afro!, Les Arènes, November 2015.
- Collective led by Aïssa Maïga, Noire n'est pas mon métier, Seuil, 2018.
- Inna Modja interview published by Afrik.com on November 7, 2011.
- National Assembly, bill aimed at recognizing and penalizing hair discrimination, adopted on first reading on March 28, 2024, and sent to the Senate the same day (Senate legislative file No. 486, 2023-2024).
