Lau­ra Dowrich-Phillips

When a friend sug­gest­ed she start a blog and asked what she want­ed to write about, it didn't take long for Patrice Eliz­a­beth Grell-Yur­sik to come up with a theme. Hav­ing de­cid­ed to wear her hair nat­ur­al years be­fore, she re­alised the ab­sence of mag­a­zines about black women with nat­ur­al hair. This pro­vid­ed an ide­al op­por­tu­ni­ty for her to speak to that com­mu­ni­ty. On her apt­ly named blog Afro­bel­la, Grell-Yur­sik re­views prod­ucts, hosts give-aways, speaks about the in­her­ent chal­lenges in rock­ing a nat­ur­al do; like find­ing sa­lons that spe­cialise in nat­ur­al hair, and most im­por­tant­ly, she pro­vides a fo­rum for black women to net­work and share ex­pe­ri­ences.

Afro­bel­la went live in 2006 and many con­sid­er it an au­thor­i­ty on black beau­ty on­line. The blog gets thou­sands of hits every­day. "I used to read a lot of blogs and I used to com­ment on a lot of blogs. One of them was Con­creteloop. She has the most pop­u­lar black gos­sip blog in Amer­i­ca and she start­ed around same time as me. I told her that she in­spired me and she loved my blog and put it on the front page as blog of the week and it stayed there for a while. My hits went from a few to thou­sands overnight," said Grell-Yur­sik. Afro­bel­la's pop­u­lar­i­ty re­cent­ly caught the eyes of the ed­i­tors at Ital­ian Vogue, who asked Grell-Yur­sik to write about hair and beau­ty for a new pub­li­ca­tion called Vogue Black. "I got an email from them say­ing they ad­mired my work and they are look­ing to in­crease the con­tri­bu­tions of black blog­gers. It's been in­ter­est­ing, I am en­joy­ing it very much so far," said Grell-Yur­sik, who al­so con­tributes to AOL's Black Voic­es and Amer­i­can Air­lines' Black At­las Web site.

As has been the luck of some blog­gers, Grell-Yur­sik, 31, was of­fered a book deal and cur­rent­ly has a pro­pos­al in the works for an Afro­bel­la book of beau­ty. That this for­mer Mi­a­mi news­pa­per ed­i­tor should wind up as an in­flu­en­tial voice for black beau­ty is no sur­prise. Though she did an un­der­grad­u­ate de­gree in film and a Mas­ters in cre­ative writ­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mi­a­mi af­ter leav­ing Trinidad in 1998, she al­ways loved cos­met­ics and any­thing beau­ty re­lat­ed. Her pas­sion was in­nate and fur­ther fu­elled by a job she held at a then pop­u­lar cos­met­ic store at the age of eight. "I worked at Fabi's in West­mall. I was work­ing there from the age of eight; that was my Christ­mas job. My mom used to shop at the store ob­ses­sive­ly and the own­er re­alised I had the gift to sell be­cause I would al­ways rec­om­mend things to my moth­er. I think at that age they re­alised I cared about those things," re­called Grell-Yur­sik.

Her fix­a­tion with nat­ur­al hair didn't come un­til lat­er, when she mi­grat­ed and found the guts to lib­er­ate her­self from the hair straight­en­ing chem­i­cals she loathed. "I hat­ed get­ting my hair re­laxed, I hat­ed the way it smelled. The courage came when I moved abroad. At home peo­ple were very judg­men­tal about how you looked, but when I came abroad I re­alised you can be beau­ti­ful the way you are. Peo­ple weren't talk­ing about me the way they would at home. Al­so, my hus­band lets me know I am beau­ti­ful no mat­ter how I look. "Last time I re­laxed my hair was in 2002. For my wed­ding, I had short spiky hair with a tiara. I nev­er looked back, it was lib­er­at­ing." Every­one was not on board with her de­ci­sion, par­tic­u­lar­ly her moth­er. "We lim­it our­selves and we don't re­alise how, in terms of ex­er­cis­ing, in terms of swim­ming in a pool, you can't walk in the rain. My hair ex­press­es my per­son­al­i­ty," said Grell-Yur­sik, who said she still gets neg­a­tive com­ments about her hair when she vis­its.

"It dis­ap­points me a lit­tle bit be­cause in so many ways we are trend­set­ters and we em­brace every creed and race but to be seen as a beau­ti­ful per­son you have to con­form to a nar­row view of beau­ty in terms of hair, skin colour and weight." She said while there are peo­ple in the US who do strug­gle with those per­cep­tions of beau­ty, there are those who would com­pli­ment her hair but say they can't do that be­cause their hair is not like hers. "I am like, how do you know? I didn't know. It took me a long time to fig­ure out how to style it and comb it. "The biggest ques­tion I am asked is what prod­ucts to use, how do I get it to look like yours? That both­ers me be­cause your hair is your beau­ty. There is a men­tal­i­ty that beau­ty is long hair and it has to have a cer­tain curl but if your hair is very, very coarse and very short no­body should make you feel ug­ly."

Grell-Yur­sik, a Bish­op alum, hopes to one day spread the gospel of Afro­bel­la lo­cal­ly. These events bring women to­geth­er to net­work over drinks while pam­per­ing them with gift bags and prizes. And, though she's al­ready busy meet­ing mul­ti­ple dead­lines as well as main­tain­ing her blog, the Chica­go res­i­dent sees work­ing in ra­dio, writ­ing a syn­di­cat­ed mag­a­zine col­umn and pub­lish­ing many books in her fu­ture. Ap­pear­ing on Oprah is al­so in the cards.

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You can find Patrice Eliz­a­beth Grell-Yur­sik on these sites:

Afro­bel­la.com

BVhairtalk.com

Black­at­las.com

Vogue Black (http://www.vogue.it/en/vogue-black)