“Al-Kurley” unleashes the feelings of young Egyptian women

Before, Rola Amer and Sarah Safwat were suffering from the fact that their curly hair gave a feeling of being “shaggy” and prevented them from getting a job. Today, in their curly and spiral hair salon, they are keeping pace with the “revolution” in beauty standards in Egypt.
While she was cutting the hair of one of her clients, Amer said, “Cutting curly or curly hair takes much more time than straight hair.”
After three hours of working on this woman’s hair, amid the noise of the customers who crowded the salon, joy appeared on the customer’s face as an expression of her admiration for the shape of the hair.
For years, the stylist’s 30’s, with thick spiral hair, would spend hours grooming her hair to keep it sleek. She says, “I was convinced that the best hair is beautiful, at that time that was the standard.”
“Before, if I had left my hair curly, I would have felt disheveled and looked neglected,” she adds, starting her day in “Curly Studio”, the first curly hair salon that was founded in 2018.
In the shop located in a high-end Cairo suburb, hair coils have replaced the iron that is used to straighten wrinkles so that the hair that is being cut does not penetrate dry and not wet to maintain its curly or wavy shape, according to the French Press Agency.
Sarah Safwat points out that ironing hair until it is smooth can be dangerous.
“One time, a mother came with her three-year-old daughter, and the girl’s hair was falling out after she straightened her hair using products containing chemicals.”
Over the decades, millions of Egyptians have resorted to straightening their hair to smooth it out to conform to Western beauty standards, according to Sarah Safwat, who asserts that “generations have grown up convinced of completely wrong standards of beauty.”
Before she opened her hairdressing shop, her thick curly hair was causing her problems because it was considered “a look that does not suit many jobs and is unprofessional.”