Winkler Magazine Africa Cover

inkler Magazine n ° 5 is finally online! 
Mario Epanya, the photographer and owner of the magazine has honored me to be photographed by him for this issue. 
I, a few months ago applied to be part of his exhibition Glamazonia about african natural hair and beauty. I was not picked for the exhibition but Mario invited me for this photoshoot. 
It finally took place in september. I had to work on the styling. That was a lot of fun. 
Since that day, I have the feeling that somewhat changed and grown in me. I feel more embracing my curves and the true me. 
I am a bit overwhelmed so I do not translate all the text I wrote in French. I think Google translator will be our best friend here. 
Check out Winkler Magazine november-december 2011 at the bottom of the page! And yes … cover girl! 

In February 2011, I applied, without much conviction, to the casting around the natural hair organized by the photographer Mario Epanya.

In May 2011, when I had forgotten this application, I receive a negative answer for the cast but a proposal for photo shoot for Winkler Magazine.
The goal? A wink to fashion large size, fashionable different, fashionable without complex.
I have to be the main subject, prepare the looks, be a model as well as a stylist. Pressure. And then time passes, and nothing happens. I think it will not happen.
It is besides that Mario me recontacte in September 2011 for this shooting finally take place. It will appear in issue 5 of Winkler Magazine. The number of the end of the year.
Everything goes very quickly afterwards. 10 days to prepare. How many times have I said “I have 8 looks to propose and nothing to put me”?And the shoes? You know I’m not a fashionist with a dreamy shoesing …
I prepare this shooting. I think of clothes, accessories, hairdressing.Oh la la la! The hairstyle! It takes an afro. Mouais … my hair refuse to form a harmonious ball … good! Come on! Saturday! Here we are!
I meet Mario, he immediately puts me at ease, I show him the pieces I have brought, he make up. Mario was Morpho-Maquilleur before becoming a photographer. It is therefore naturally that he splutters on my face.
I sneak and discover the result with false eyelashes! Oh, I was laughing and wondering who the woman was in the mirror.
The photo shoot starts. I’m not a professional. I do not know how to ask. It’s awkward, Mario is very very very patient! He guides me and encourages me. I take a lot of fun playing with my clothes and changing roles according to the chosen look.
The hairstyle holds the road! The looks are linked, I start to tire. At the last look, Mario tells me “I’m starting to lose you”! Ah? Well!Here we go again! But it’s already over.
I put on my jeans, my tee-shirt, my ballerinas, my backpack, my travel bag, and my Navigo pass.
It was a parenthesis. I did not want to remove make-up until two o’clock in the morning. I wanted to keep this face, this stranger that I liked rather well.

And then I try to forget that this meeting took place because the wait is long. Very long. Almost 2 months. But I feel something has changed after this Saturday afternoon. I feel like another woman. I feel like I’ve discovered a different woman, or at least a woman I did not know yet. Until then I was no longer a child, and not yet a woman. I became a woman through this photo shoot. I thought I was in my sneakers for a long time but not. It was not yet completely the case. 

The result is beyond my expectations. 

I think of this time at 7 years when a friend of the family, who probably wanted me good told me “big as you are you will never be able to do classical dance”. I believed it and did not insist on being registered.
I think of all those family meals where uncles and aunts told me “Gaëlle does not eat too much, and besides I will come to get you on Sunday to run on the Corniche.”
I think of my 8-year-old girlfriends who had pretty varnished ballerinas bought at Gréco because there were their size, and I who was browsing the Sandaga market in search of men’s sneakers because of my large feet.
I remember the tanties that reminded me constantly that I was fat and that I had to wear black or brown. To hide surely.
I remember the first appointment in the endocrinologist, the first diet, the first time I notice that my chest already resembles that of a middle-aged woman when I was only 12 years old. Skin that suffers from losing weight and taking it back. Eating disorders, difficulty concentrating on a task due to fatigue and deficiencies due to the latest diet advised by such a magazine, skin hanging, stretch marks.The look of the others. 
 
I remember this Tuesday, February 28, 1995 when my sister told me “Gaëlle, you’re pretty.” It was the first time I was told and the last time I spoke to him. 
And now? I look at these clichés and ask each of my readers, never, never, to push a child or a “different” teenager from others to doubt him or her abilities. Our difference is our strength. Self-esteem passes by the opinion of others. It is sad but it is so. 
 
You are daily more numerous to visit this blog, to live with me these adventures of dress and I dare believe that if you come back, it is because you have understood that I do not delight in my pounds but that I live. I live and I do not expect to lose weight to be happy.
 
I began to tell about clothes on October 22nd 2007 and since then, I do not regret to expose myself thus. I am all the more the result of a modest culture, where one does not show oneself, where one hides his feelings, where the “what will be said” prime, bridle and brim but I refuse To bend myself because if at 15 years I had met a Vanoue in the street, I would certainly have felt less cramped in my body. 
 
I think I am halfway through the path towards self-acceptance, and a new stage has just been achieved thanks to Mario Epanya whom I thank for introducing me to myself.
Go to the bottom of page to fold the Winkler Magazine n ° 5!