INTERVIEWED BY TELEPHONE, MARCH 30, 2012
Mahisha, thank you for taking the time to have this conversation with me. You are the founder of Curls, which specializes in multiethnic hair care products. When was Curls formed, and what products have you created?
We launched Curls in 2002. I was in a restaurant in Santa Barbara, California, with my husband—at that time we were dating. I was sharing with him that I would like to explore a new professional opportunity. I was working for a large technology corporation and had an amazing first few years there in corporate America. Then I ran across an extreme case of racism and discrimination at my job with the current manager. I was discouraged and surprised. At that point in my career I had never experienced that at all. Because of that experience I decided that I was going to do something different and control my own destiny. So my then-boyfriend and I were talking over a wonderful, romantic dinner and weekend about options for me. I told him that I wanted to explore this passion of mine—hair care.
On a personal level up to that point, I had a challenge finding the right products for my hair because the products that were available for the African American market were either relaxers or greasy, heavy products with synthetic oils that would smell awful and weigh my hair down, like a Jheri Curl.
But then the products from the main aisle or the mass-market products were too drying—the gels, the mousse, the hairsprays, et cetera. And so before Curls came along, I had to use a hodgepodge of products and kind of blend things together, like taking one shampoo from this line and mixing this and that from another line. And I was never set for great curly hair days. That is when I decided that I am going to embark on this decision and go ahead and form my own hair line. So Curls, Inc., was really born that night over dinner, and I had four products: Curls Shampoo/Conditioner, Curls Moisturizer, Curls Refresher, and Curls Lotion. Now we have four lines and thirteen products. So Curls has grown exponentially since then. It started as a very small, small business operating in my home, and now the Curls products are available in nationwide stores.
Mahisha, how would you describe the texture of your hair, and what makes it challenging to have the healthy bouncy curls you want using “ethnic products” [available] in the mainstream market?
Generally speaking, I have naturally curly, medium-textured hair. So it is not so thick, but it is not very, very fine either. My hair is midroad. I have definitely curly hair; it is not kinky, but it is not bone straight. Curly hair, no matter what texture, has a tendency to be frizzy. If you don’t use the right products and then weigh your hair down with them, then your curls are going to droop, pull out, and look greasy. Really, it is about finding the right balance for your hair. Unfortunately a lot of the masses of products on the market for African Americans are not created by African Americans. They are created by big, large multinational corporations that put synthetic ingredients in their products because they are cheap to acquire, like mineral oil, which you see in about every hair grease jar. Synthetic or mineral oil is the heaviest and is not good for your hair. It totally destroys the hair shaft. It blocks out moisture, which dries out the hair. But that is what you will see if you go look on the main hair care aisle in the major grocery stores. So these types of hair products are cheap. They are easy to acquire. Basically these Caucasian-owned companies just throw that ingredient in there, not really caring about the quality of the product for the ethnic market. So that was the first generation of ethnic products—that is what I call it. The second generation of ethnic products includes my products, Curls, Inc., and all of those other great brands that are available now, created for us by us. You have probably heard of them: Miss Jessie’s, Kinky-Curly, and Shea Moisture. There are a lot of new black-owned businesses that specialize in ethnic hair—I call them the next generation—which are now sporting better, healthier options because we care about what we are putting on our hair, and therefore we care deeply about what we are selling to our customers.
You have donated Curls products and partnered with adoption agencies and adoption-related groups to address the hair care needs of primarily black and biracial transracially adopted children. Why have you chosen to reach out to this particular segment of the population?
Working with foster care and adoption groups and organizations is very near and dear to my heart, and that is where we started ten years ago, and we still are very active in that community. I feel that there are so many kids that need great homes. As it relates to transracial adoptive placements, I am happy to see that black and biracial kids are being adopted and that Caucasian and non–African American families are bringing these children to their homes and giving them love. So they’re doing that with their whole open heart to love them, but for some parents who may have straight, blond hair, for example, they can be clueless as to what to do with their African American or black baby’s kinky hair. So my thoughts were, if you as parents are willing to provide a child a home but need assistance in taking care of their hair, then I would love to help you as parents with your children’s hair care needs because self-esteem is important for girls of color, women of color, and hair maintenance and health is a huge part of that. These transracially adopted kids deserve it! They deserve not only the opportunity to have an amazing home and love, and I am happy for that, but they also deserve to have their hair cared for and maintained in a healthy way. Nine times out of ten, it has been my experience that these kids of color are adopted by Caucasian families who are not living or involved in black communities, so they do not have that help. Typically I have run into transracial adoptive families with black children where their daughter’s hair is horrible looking because of the lack of care and expertise. I have seen cases where Caucasian families wash, shampoo, their African American daughter’s kinky hair every single day! It rips out the natural moisture in the hair, and it causes hair breakage.
For my parents, and I know still for many Caucasian parents raising black children, maintaining good health for their ethnic child’s hair is certainly a struggle. It requires a cultural and mental shift, I think, from what many Caucasian men and women are used to in maintaining their own hair. Can you walk us through how your Curls product line can help with this?
Yes. Black hair is not “wash-and-go” hair like Caucasian hair. That is the key difference that I don’t think many Caucasian parents realize going into this, so they really have their hands full. With any product, not just with Curls, but with any product you are going to use, whenever you have an African American child, the hair care process or taking care of their hair is going to be much longer than taking care of Caucasian hair. So the shampoo process alone with Caucasian hair is basically wash, comb out, and go. When you are shampooing your African American kid’s hair, you have that process of detangling the hair, which can easily take thirty minutes to get through, if it is really kinky. You do it with a large-tooth comb, section by section. And then from there to conditioning and styling of the hair—that can take you up to, at the minimum, another thirty minutes. So shampoo-conditioner days are about an hour to one-and-a-half-hour process. You don’t shampoo African American hair every day. Usually we recommend one to two times a week; with kinkier hair it can go one time a week.
Caring for black hair can be considered a long process and a big shock to Caucasian adoptive parents. But regardless of what hair care products you are using, it is really about the hair type of the child when it comes to the process of detangling, shampooing, and conditioning the hair. It does take time, patience, and equipment. When I work with parents and do hair care presentations with Curls products, I do run across those parents that are clueless at first, but once they embraced their child’s hair and learned how to care for it, they took it away. They learned how to French braid, corn row, and style their child’s hair in many wonderful ways. They knew what they were doing because they invested a lot of their time in educating themselves on their child’s hair and hair care needs. So every day of styling black hair is not necessarily long, but the shampoo day in a black home is like an all-day process, especially if you have more than one girl in the home.
Yes. I know for many of these families it is hard to rev up for a whole day of hair care. During a whole day on a Saturday, for instance, you can attend a soccer game or gymnastics practice with your child, listen to her piano recital, or allow her to swim in a pool with friends and still make time for a food break. Contrast that to a child who is getting her hair shampooed, conditioned, and styled all morning and into the late afternoon. It is certainly a reality and cultural shift that a lot of Caucasian parents raising African American children will need to address. I think, though, it is so worth it for particularly the child and adolescent to be proud of their hair health and style. It will instruct them how to take care of their own hair into adulthood in confidence.
Mahisha, I wanted to talk with you a little bit about how you progressed from your childhood to becoming a strong woman of color. Can you share any words of wisdom that have empowered you in your journey so far?
My father and his whole side of his family had an amazing impact on my life because they were a family of firsts. My dad and his family are a multigenerational mixed family, Creole. To me they were an amazing people because they made a lot of strides in society. Eric Holder is a cousin on my dad’s side. He was the first African American attorney general for the United States, serving under the Obama administration. His career is quite extensive. Vivian Malone Jones is in my family, and she was the first African American to graduate from the University of Alabama. This was in the early 1960s, during a time when black students were vehemently discouraged from attending all-white institutions of learning. She had to be regularly escorted into the school because her life was threatened. She made it through and graduated. And then she became the first of many in her career endeavors after that. There is a building named after her at the University of Alabama because of the many contributions she made to the institution and to society, including her work during the civil rights movement and partnering with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and so on.
So in addition to these incredible people in my family, there are more people in my family that have also created an amazing legacy that I was able to see and watch and be inspired by. My family was, and continues to be, an advocate for education. A key question in our family is, What are you going to do with your life? Whatever that is, as long as it is noble, my family would say: “Don’t sit and dream about it, go out and live it and make it happen!” That expectation was important to me.
The positive images in my family are what continue to empower me. I keep them near and dear to my heart. My father was also very big on reinforcing those images and insisted as I was growing up on making sure that I was exposed to my father’s side of the family so I could see that example.
Was there discussion on either side of your family about how to move in society with dark skin?
Yes. Dad always said to me that you have to work harder than, be better than, and go further than your Caucasian neighbors or colleagues to get the same favorable attention. He said, “Remember that!” Personally I have never forgotten that, especially in my corporate America days. After I graduated from college and entered corporate America, I executed that belief accordingly. I did well, but even then you don’t always know who you are going to get as a manager. That was the thing that threw me at that moment—that I was an amazing achiever, yet this one person wanted to get rid of me. I was a single mother and I had rent to pay. I had a daughter in private school. My world was almost going to be shattered for a moment. That was very scary for me. And I thought to myself that I would not be in that position again.
So you did realize, even before this sad incident [the manager who wanted to fire her], that people judged you solely because of the color of your skin?
Yes, absolutely. My dad would tell me that, obviously. He also was very active in the civil rights movement and was problack. He would definitely try to educate me about race and racism, but I personally did not see that before the event in corporate America impacted me. I was exposed to interracial couples. I dated guys from different racial backgrounds, including Caucasian, African American, and Asian. For me it was not really what color they were but who was compatible with me at the time. I worked and lived in diverse environments. My school was in a diverse environment. Up until then I simply had not experienced racism. So when I went to my very first corporate job, I recognized that there were not a lot of African American people there, but I came in knowing that I am who I am and I can make my mark because I am a good person, I am a good worker and have the skill set. This job was going to be a breeze, I thought.
The first three years at my corporate job were great. When I transferred to a different department, everything changed and I got a new manager. That was when everything went downward.
Do you think that the change in how you were treated by this manager occurred because of the color of your skin?
Absolutely. There was no other explanation for it. There was a very clear road map given to us as professionals on how to succeed at this corporation. I had a mentor. I excelled in everything I did for this corporation. Not only did I succeed at my job but I was involved in extracurricular activities and presented myself well before the board. I was on committees. I was delivering great initiatives on a regular basis. I was doing all of the things the corporation indicated that they would like for someone in my position to do, especially if we wanted a promotion. So I was exceeding everywhere I went, and then this manager came in and tried to fire me. Apparently he didn’t think that I was working hard enough. This was a life-turning event for me. I was totally distraught because he put me on this crisis action plan, which was one of the most embarrassing punitive actions. I prayed about this whole nightmare. I knew that if I lost this job, it would be very difficult for me because I was a single mother then and I had a kid to take care of financially. I was so nervous. I could not afford to lose this job.
How did it end up turning out?
The manager left the department right in the midst of that drama. He actually got a promotion. I then applied to another position within the corporation and got another manager, a far better manager. From him I got ranked faster, got a promotion and more stock options. He was amazed with all that I was doing within my pay level. I always knew that I did great work; it was not a surprise to me.
And so to be treated inappropriately by my previous manager, it was clear to me what I was dealing with: racism. But in corporate America you never know who you are going to deal with, and that is unfortunate. This event changed how I viewed corporate America and how I viewed racism, and racism in the workplace specifically. Unfortunately I realized in my work setting that for some Caucasians, they are not going to always love me or see my value in the work that I do because they can’t get past the color of my skin. My world changed. It was no longer an innocent world that I lived in. Now I was on guard. I told myself, “Mahisha, now this is real. Saddle up. Get ready. You might be hit with this again!”
What got you through this ordeal?
It was prayer. I prayed to God. At that point I had been at the company for six years. I loved the organization I worked for. It was an amazing company with a lot of brilliant people. I remember specifically praying, “Please, God, remove this man from this organization, and please enable me to move up and into another position!” Then God answered my prayers! At the same time I started working on Curls. That’s when I decided that I was going to do something else in my career and not rely on corporate America.
The whole experience was [a] life-changing, devastating, and an eye-awakening experience because, one, you think, “That can’t happen to me!” Reflecting on it, I can remember the situation and my feelings. The interesting thing in this whole job situation was that my boss that hired me [originally] was a Caucasian male who was married to an African American woman. Both he and his wife adopted two African American kids. I discovered this during the interview process when I saw photos of his family on his desk. So when it sunk in that his wife was black and his children were black, I knew that he was not going to be racist. I said, “Okay, he is married to a black woman and adopted black children—I am good. I am good.”
I’m glad that you worked through what sounds like a very difficult situation. Given the experience you just shared and what you have learned as a parent, what values are you and your husband teaching your children?
For all of my kids I teach them the importance of education, working hard, thriving, and giving. In this household we do not allow anybody to do things just halfway. Just yesterday my six-year-old son was working on a writing assignment for school. My husband and I want to make sure that our son’s sentence structures are correct and that he is writing neatly. That’s the most important thing right now that we focus on with him in his schoolwork. Actually our son is very smart. But he was rushing through his writing assignment to do something else. My husband ripped the paper up because it was not written neatly and made him start all over again! It took my son a long time to get to the point that he was at. My husband is strict. He is a little bit more hard core than I am. I probably would not have ripped up the paper. For us it is about teaching our kids to do the very best they can, all of the time. Now for my seven-year-old daughter it is about saving and investing and working hard. I bring her to work with me during her school breaks—spring break, summer break, and winter break—so that she can see how hard I work and to give her hands-on experience working in an office environment. It is not a typical job a seven-year-old would be doing but rather a twenty-five-year-old or twenty-six-year-old. It certainly is nurturing a sink-or-swim mentality. I am giving her that real-life experience. I didn’t have someone in my family who started a business. They were mostly either attorneys, doctors, politicians, or pro basketball players. So for my daughter this is great for her because she gets to experience the behind the scenes of the Curls business. She is traveling with me and works the phones. She gets to put in marketing time. She does a lot of stuff. I want her to learn that the key to success is hard work.
You have the heart and vision of a teacher. That is very impressive!
While you are on such a roll, I want to get your motherly advice on dating. It is probably a topic that all parents hold their breath on when their children turn sixteen or seventeen years of age. What have you taught your oldest daughter on how to navigate the dating scene? I want to also touch back on the transracial adoption piece for Caucasian parents who are raising black daughters who may be interested particularly in dating inracially as well as interracially.
My oldest daughter is young and beautiful. She is a popular girl. So I have really frank, honest conversations with her about boys, and her father does too. She is definitely sheltered and a little bit naive. I have to meet every one of the boys that she wants to date. I have a very good sense of character. I will determine yes or no as to whether she can date the boy. It is not easy.
I am curious to know what that checklist looks like for you when determining what young boy is acceptable to date your daughter.
He needs to have a good upbringing, a good family structure. I definitely want someone for my daughter that is God-fearing because at least he will have a sense of morality about him. Unfortunately there are a lot of young boys out there that don’t have a sense of morality. I saw this one brother walking hand in hand; he had one girl holding one of his hands and another one on his arm. Two! And they were both okay with this! When it comes to dating, I work with my daughter to teach her what characteristics to look for in a boy and emphasize to her that she needs to always have a strong sense of self.
A strong sense of self-esteem is so important because when she turns sixteen, from that point on, it is almost too late if she doesn’t have it already. In our family we have close conversations about trust with our daughter. How do you build trust in a healthy way when you begin a relationship with a boy? We monitor all of her relationships as a way to guide her and to help her make wise choices. Some people may say that I should give my daughter privacy. I don’t agree. She is a teenager. I monitor everything. If she is on Facebook or any other social sites, I expect her to give me her passwords. I may monitor her sites every day, every week, or every month—regardless she knows that I have her passwords. It is not so much about her, but it is about other people and what they are doing and who she is out with. Again, we are very strict about who our daughter can go out with on a date. It is all about monitoring and being very active in your child’s life as a parent. For me nothing slips through my fingers because I am a very active parent. My words of advice to parents: Before any kid gets to the dating process, parents, you need to establish in your daughter’s strong self-esteem. If not, when your daughter starts to date, she will give in to any boy and have the potential of becoming a victim to any predator or any guy that wants to explore that intimate part of his life with her.
How does a parent give the gift of nurturing a strong sense of self-esteem in a black girl in particular? A healthy self-esteem seems to be a key answer to addressing in a healthy way life issues. That’s huge!
In college I had a Women of Color class I took that was amazing. What I remember from that class was this study conducted with a group of nine-year-old black girls. These girls were given a black baby doll and a white baby doll. They were randomly asked questions about each of the dolls. The results of the study showed that the majority of the black girls preferred the white baby. And the interviewers asked the black girls why they didn’t like the black baby. These little girls of color said that they did not think that the black doll was beautiful or cute. They also said about the black baby doll that she looked sad and mean, that she was not nice. And for them the white baby doll represented all of the pleasant things.
Yes. I remember the Clark and Clark Doll [Tests]. [They were] conducted by [Kenneth and Mamie] Clark . . . back in 1939. Since then I believe there have been other, similar doll studies conducted with slight variations in the results. The Clark and Clark Doll [Tests] remain such an eye-opening study even today when we look at the value (or lack thereof) placed on someone solely because of the color of one’s skin.
Exactly. That study was about self-esteem in black girls, basically. When I was taking this course in college, where I first learned about this study, my daughter was only a few years old at the time. I really took that study to heart. I made sure first that she had a lot of images around that looked like her. My daughter’s pediatrician was African American. Her dentist was African American. The books that she had included black characters in them, and her baby dolls were also black. There was a preteen TV show called That’s So Raven, which featured the little girl who was on the Cosby Show. I actually took my young daughter at the time to the taping of that show so that she could meet Raven [Raven-Symoné] and see someone who looked like her. I wanted her to see images of herself in all of these good places so that she could build a good sense of self. My daughter attended a mostly white private school so I had to bring all of these extra images to her of black people so that she could see like images of her. From that I constantly told her how beautiful she was: her character, her skin, her hair—even though she was different, she was also beautiful!
My youngest daughter, who is now six, she has brown skin but has bone-straight hair. She doesn’t have any curls in her hair. My husband is Asian, so she has interesting features. It can be hard to determine what her racial background is. I tell her all the time, because she is also attending a mostly Caucasian school, that she too is pretty and that there are a lot of people that pay to look like her. Most of her friends are Caucasian, and I don’t want her to feel horrible because she does not look like her friends or wish that she wasn’t who she is. Now she says, “I have the prettiest skin in my whole school.”
You have to give your children images of themselves everywhere you can. That is what I had to do with both of my daughters in particular.
You have a young son. How do you raise him?
It’s a little different. Girls have the biggest issue with self-esteem. I remember reading a lot about that and paying attention to studies on this subject. That is why with the girls I take a very aggressive approach. With my son it is a little more lax. For him I encourage him to be a good person, but I don’t emphasize to him that he is so handsome and that his skin color is beautiful, et cetera. It is a little bit different. So I am not overt with him with that piece. It’s more about teaching him to be a good boy, a good son, a good student, a good person.
How does your husband guide your son as he gets older and is moving in society with dark skin?
My husband and I, we are an interracial couple, so he has not had the same experiences of course as I have. He is part Korean and part Caucasian, so he doesn’t see the issues of being a person of color because he has the white skin privilege. Asians, as you know, are the “model minority.” Therefore we have to balance that because he does not see really how different the experience could be for our son, who looks black.
I like how you are able to see and assess the strengths and challenges within each of your children as well as their realities, given the society that we live in. You certainly, though, have a beautiful family and an engaged one!
Before we end our conversation what is your advice to white adoptive parents who are raising children of color as it relates to how they can connect with the black community, to gain the kind of experiences that you have talked about here?
I think that it is extremely important for transracial adoptive parents to definitely seek out people in the African American community for themselves and for their children. Also there are many adoptive parents who are already doing this, but I think it is a great opportunity to sign up their kids with transracial adoptee play groups. With my six- and seven-year-olds, I put them in a play group with kids their age and who are multiethnic. They are a part of a group of six, three boys and three girls. They all go to the same school. These kids formed their own alliance and get to socialize with kids that look like them. In her play group my daughter Isabella sees somebody like her, Kayla, so she is not the only one. So my daughter forms this strong sense that “I am beautiful, Kayla is beautiful.” Play groups are a great place to start for parents, especially if they do not have an official organization that their kids are participating in. Also, if parents can bring other positive imagery to their family illustrating kids with dark skin, ordering—online, if necessary—storybooks with African American kids and other kids of color in it and dolls et cetera is another wonderful option. These seem like little things that we don’t always think about, but they matter in a huge way. If you grow up with dolls as girls, a lot of times you wish you looked like them. I know that when I grew up, I didn’t have a lot of black babies. I had an identity crisis myself. That’s why I decided that I was going to do it differently with my daughters. I gave both of them a totally new experience, especially Isabella.
You have clear vision for your blended family and for your life. How can Caucasian parents who have adopted multiethnic children gain from your blueprint?
That is a really hard question to answer. I can definitely say to adoptive parents to take some of the things that I said here and try to implement them. For some parents who are adopting transracially, it is a world that is unfamiliar to them so it may be hard to think about how important it is for their black sons and daughters to see positive black images. You know who I think does a good job at this? The answer is Angelina Jolie (and Brad Pitt) with their Vietnamese son and their Ethiopian daughter. They take them back to their home countries, their homeland, and keep them connected. I know that they don’t do it often, but at least Angelina and Brad are aware of the importance of that connection for their kids. So I think to be cognizant as transracial adoptive parents of the fact that their children of color need to see that imagery and really appreciate it is really important. In their minds they may feel that they are giving these kids a loving home so why does it matter? I go back to, because it is important to their son’s and daughter’s self-esteem. So being cognizant that their children need that is the number 1 step to implement the things that I said I did for my daughters. I think the same principles could apply to Caucasian parents who are raising children of color—because, although I am not Caucasian, I still live in a Caucasian environment, and I needed to make sure that I was able to supplement my children’s exposure.
I think that parents can really look at supplementing their children’s education, their exposure to a diverse group of people, their surroundings, as a really great way for providing for each member of the family the needs and cultural experiences that help each one flourish and be essentially valued.
I want to thank you, Mahisha, for sharing so much in this discussion and for your generosity in time and knowledge.
Curls is now available at all Target stores. Curls products are also available at nationwide Sally’s Beauty Supply stores. We are also at Rite Aid and CVS stores. Next year Curls will be in Walmart stores. So we have our retail line as well as we have Curls professional, Curls for kids, and Curls for babies. So Curls is growing phenomenally. So what we would like to see, or what I would like to see in the next five years, my goal for the company, is to double our sales and to continue our exposure into other international markets. We are already in the U.K. and Brazil, but we want to go into other markets as well, including Africa and including other South America areas. The retail line is doing amazing. We have hit our sweet spot. It took a lot of work because, as you know, when you come in doing it yourself, learning as you go, it took a while to get to where we are today. They always tell you in business school, when you are prepping to be a business owner, . . . don’t prepare to make any money the first five years. You will be in the red. Expect that. Well, we made money out the gate the first year and every year after that. We started small, but we kept growing financially every year. And then in the fifth year, really, Curls shot through the roof and things really shifted for us.