Many years passed before Stefania Porzio (@esderulos) could admire her lush curly hair. With practice, she discovered techniques to achieve perfect definition and thus get rid of the insecurities that had plagued her self-esteem for so long. Today, she leads workshops to teach the Curly Girl method and owns a business where she sells all the necessary products. This is the story of how curlers transformed his life.
Stefania Porzio (32) is easy to recognize on the streets of Viña del Mar, the city where she is from and where she currently lives. Her lush hair does not let her go unnoticed. It never was. Her perfectly defined curls that move naturally to the rhythm of her steps have become her trademark.
Getting her hair perfect enough to receive compliments all day takes her half an hour when it’s time to wash and do her full routine. But he did not always receive compliments or positive comments about the shape of his hair, quite the contrary: during his adolescence, he was the butt of teasing in the street. “Woodhead” or “You put your fingers in the socket” were among the most repeated comments.
“At puberty, I started to feel ugly. I had very long curly hair so I always wore it up and it looked very voluminous. I used to tell my parents that I tied him so tight because I wanted him to fall.” Stefania recounts, adding that her first memories of seeing herself as different from the rest of her classmates date back to recess, “when the aunts would comb the girls’ hair and leave them ready for their parents to pick them up. They groomed my straight haired companions perfectly, but they had no idea what to do with me. That’s when I started wondering why my hair was so messy.”
Stefania’s hair has never been a problem for her family: her mother and one of her sisters are curly (another has wavy hair) and her aunts and cousins are too. She grew up in an environment where having curls was nothing new, but When hair straighteners became famous, he gave straight hair a chance: “I looked in the mirror and said ‘that’s not me.’ My curly hair identified me so much that straightening it was never an option.
release curls
As her mother urged her to embrace her curls, at that moment, disobedient at all costs, she disagreed with Stefania cutting her hair. It so happened that for a few days her mother went on a trip and she did not think twice and went to the hairdresser to try her luck. “They cut it off at shoulder height, to the point that I couldn’t tie it up anymore, I couldn’t hide it anymore. I would say it was my first hair out. It was there and I couldn’t control it. » remember.
Coming out of college, she felt “doomed” with her curly hair. Keeping it relatively tidy took a lot of work, it was fragile and it fell easily: “The decision was to shave or look for information. I knew I wasn’t the only one, so I found the famous curly girl method. I saw that there were techniques to take care of it and in my research I came across a Spaniard who had hair very similar to mine and who made videos on YouTube on how to take care of it. I started to practice, but it was difficult at first because in Chile I couldn’t find any products she used, so I had to learn to read the ingredients on the back of the packages. I spent hours at the supermarket trying to find out what product served me”.
The first few months were filled with trial and error, until she managed to find the method that worked best for her to embrace and love her curls. She liked the result so much that she decided to record a tutorial and upload it to a Facebook group dedicated to people with curlers. She received many compliments and thanks, but members of this community started arguing in the comments of the post for reasons beyond Stefania’s control, which resulted in her being kicked out of the group. Despite this, many girls grateful for his advice wrote him messages on Facebook asking him for more information. After reflection, he was encouraged to create Instagram @esderulos in 2017.
You might think that my Instagram is very superficial, that it only talks about how to have beautiful hair, but those who follow me know how difficult it is to be born and live with curly hair, because it fills you with insecurity. .
As his community began to grow in number, so did his genuine interest in learning how to make those dream curls. SO He began giving face-to-face workshops to teach the technique, first in Viña del Mar and then in Santiago, reaching two sessions a day, each with 40 participants.
At the end of 2019, he left his job in his father’s family business to devote himself entirely to curling. In 2020, he expanded his knowledge to a Web page where he sells all the products necessary to achieve these results. Today, this platform is their main income. “I started it as a business because as an influencer it’s super hard to generate income because I have to reject multiple brands because I’m very strict about the products I use. They even offered me a straightener. It is also very difficult to know how to monetize your time. But the site started to grow and today I live from it. I find it heavy that what I hated most about myself at one point in my life is now what gives me everything. It’s super cute and I was able to reconcile with a big part of me.”
Would you say your insecurities are gone?
You might think that my Instagram is very superficial, that it only talks about how to have beautiful hair, but those who follow me know how difficult it is to be born and live with curly hair, because it fills you with insecurity. . This type of hair is not very common. Before seeing all the models with straight hair, the fashion was to straighten it, and that generates a lot of insecurities. In my content I give tips on how to elevate your hair, empower yourself and start loving it, once you do it’s amazing how safe you feel. I am tall and with bushy hair, I was born exceptional, so I always wanted to go unnoticed.
Do you think that with the amount of information available today, women with this type of hair can let go of these insecurities more easily?
The moment I felt like I was really changing was when a follower said to me “Thanks to you I love myself a little more”, and I’ve never forgotten that comment . It makes me cry from time to time. So I said “I’m fine”. Now I get messages like this all the time, via social media and in workshops, and it makes me very happy. Today times are different, girls must love their curlers because girls like this are coming out on TikTok, Instagram, everywhere. It is also very important that their mothers, or those who do their hair, do not make their daughters feel like their hair is a thing.
Now there are a lot of people who want to get those perfect curls, it’s a trend.
My slogan is “Free your curls”. Yes, it’s a trend, but the trend for me is not to have curlers, but to go back to natural, to go back to your curlers, to leave the irons for a while. I love this trend of going natural, maximizing your hair, that’s what I teach every day.
Source: Latercera
I’m Rose Brown , a journalist and writer with over 10 years of experience in the news industry. I specialize in covering tennis-related news for Athletistic, a leading sports media website. My writing is highly regarded for its quick turnaround and accuracy, as well as my ability to tell compelling stories about the sport.
