Sharing and transmission on hair care “pasa” in Havana

This article is based on field research carried out in La Habana on the beauty practices of women who self-define as mulatas. The analysis focuses on the maintenance of frizzy hair disparagingly called “pasa” (raisin). It explores the habit of straightening it and the obligation to “look right” through constant care from the age of fifteen, the entry into womanhood. If hair care reveals a history of violence and the social duty to conform to normative ideals of beauty, this act also signifies the reappropriation of this history and of one’s Afro-descendant lineage. The article aims to explain the creative aspects, the dimension of pleasure, generational transmission, sensory intimacy and sharing that emerge from the accounts of the women encountered.