Kabul Beauty School
Review by Samantha Leal
When Deborah Rodriguez decides to travel to Afghanistan in 2002 after the fall of the Taliban, she has little idea of how much her life is about to change. Intending to treat wounds and broken limbs as a nurse’s assistant, she soon finds that her skills as a hairdresser are in much higher demand, setting the premise for her nonfiction book Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil (Random House, Dec. 2007, $14.95). Initially for Westerners in Afghanistan, and then later for the Afghanis themselves, Rodriguez’s beauty and hair treatments end up bringing out a side of these women she hasn’t seen before. Upon returning home, Rodriguez petitions companies for sponsorship of her new, somewhat bizarre foreign-aid project: a beauty training school in Kabul.
In a city where many women wear burqas, a garment covering the entire body including the face, this may seem like a radical idea, but Rodriguez is adamant. Having been divorced twice, she knows that a beauty school can foster self-reliance among these women.
“I knew from my own experience as a hairdresser back home that a salon is a good business for a woman—especially if she has a bad husband,” Rodriguez writes in the book.
Afghani women attend training school, and as they learn about hair dye and makeup, the author learns about their personal lives—filled with beatings, rape, and loveless marriages to old men.
Rodriguez begins to understand the life of an Afghani woman as she spends time with her students. But her school is met with criticism from male members of the community. The Taliban had closed all of the country’s beauty salons, saying they made women look like prostitutes. Rodriguez, however, writes that she believes that they actually closed the schools “because they gave women their own space where they were free from the control of men.”
Despite objections, it seems that her training school is a success: Rodriguez, who lives in Kabul and still runs the school today, claims that her graduates often go on to increase their family incomes by a staggering 400 percent.
Written in a colloquial style of prose that is reminiscent of gabbing with your own local hairdresser, Rodriguez’s memoir is both funny and heartwarming. Ranging from hilarious moments—like Afghani women opening a box of thong underwear—to heartbreaking accounts—like Rodriguez’s unsuccessful attempt to save a teenager from sexual exploitation—Kabul Beauty School is a glimpse at a post-Taliban Afghanistan, through a woman’s eyes. It shows how the least likely of talents can foster identity and hope for so many people.