Dove Empowers Girls To Love Their Curls

Best-selling author Taiye Selasi collaborates with Dove Hair to release the new Love Your Curls book, a poetic tribute to curly hair

From the LifeMinute Team

May 20, 2015

Dove has an impressive track record of empowering women and girls through self-esteem projects, and this latest one is no exception. Their mission: To help girls embrace their curls. According to Dove Hair research, as few as 10% of women feel proud of their curly hair, and only 4 out of 10 little girls with curly hair think their hair is beautiful. These findings inspired a collaborative project with best-selling author Taiye Selasi to release the new Love Your Curls book, which just launched this week.

"When Dove Hair approached me about working on the Love Your Curls book, I was deeply inspired to participate," says Selasi. "I struggled with my natural curls as a girl, and have learned to embrace them as a woman." Love Your Curls is a poetic tribute to curly hair, inspired by real stories. "Dove Hair received thousands of submissions from women who sent photos and testimonies talking about their hair stories, their daughter's hair stories and I realized I most certainly was not alone," says Selasi. "I tell the story in the forward that my sister and I used to put towels on our hair so we could feel what it was like to have the weight of straight hair and toss our ponytails. As I got older, of course, I learned not only to love my curls, but also to love myself. And this is a journey that I would love to help little girls take more quickly," she explains.

Research shows that girls who have women in their lives who love their curls are more likely to love their own hair exactly that way it is. With this in mind, Love Your Curls features stories from generations of curly haired women. "We have stories about women who describe their curls as a lion's mane, a symbol of strength, as well as talking about them in honest terms about feeling very different," says Selasi. Of course, learning to love you hair has a lot to do with finding the right products for it. "I'm a huge advocate of leave-in conditioner. On a humid day, I wouldn't leave the house without it. And Dove Quench Absolute Leave-In Serum is absolutely fantastic. I think that Dove Hair has done a wonderful job releasing a line of products that will help with that. But a lot of it, and I would even say the most important part of it, is the confidence, culture and rallying cry to say 'love your curls exactly the way they are because they are beautiful'," she says.

Love Your Curls is available to download as a free digital e-book--and it's customizable. "This is the most exciting part. I left a poem open so that you can insert the name of the curly girl in your world, her hair color, her eye color and have a poem read to her, just for her. You can write a dedication on the website and share it. I encourage you to do that because we know that women who love their curls inspire girls to love their curls," says Selasi. You can share a customized version on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest with #LoveYourCurls.

Dove Hair has also created a run of special-edition hard cover copies of the Love Your Curls book that will be made available to select partner organizations, including Boys & Girls Clubs of America. Additionally, educators are encouraged to apply for a free hard cover copy at Dove.com/loveyourcurls.

Sponsored