simplylovely
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Agencies: New York Models | LA Model Management
5' 7" · Dr 2 US · 34" · 26 · 35 · 9.5 US · Brown · Black
She is a model, singer, and poet.
5' 7" · Dr 2 US · 34" · 26 · 35 · 9.5 US · Brown · Black
She is a model, singer, and poet.
Tell us a bit about yourself and where you grew up? How has your background shaped who you are as a person?
Annahstasia Enuke: I'm from Los Angeles, California. I’m Nigerian-American. My mom is white and from the Mid-west, she has Polish/German heritage and my dad is Nigerian who spent his youth between England and Nigeria. They’re both fashion designers and have amazing artistic minds, so my upbringing was very constructive in terms of my artistic development. My standards were set high for myself and for them. I remember when I was 5 years old, I did a painting of a poinsettia and my dad liked it so much he bought it from me for a dollar and said he would buy any piece he liked off of me. He never bought another one! But me holding my breath for that taught me the valuable lesson of standing up for what I create, despite “market demand”.
I was raised in a bit of a cultural bubble. What my parents brought into the home is what I learned. This hodgepodge of Nigerian, Midwestern, Asian, and European cultures. The things my parents enjoyed were usually not informed directly by our physical surroundings as we moved around LA.
Do you remember the first time you were conscious of your appearance?
Annahstasia Enuke: I think it was 4th grade. I had terrible eyes already and I was begging my mom for contacts and a relaxer for my hair. I was one of a few black girls at a mostly Korean and Filipino school. And I guess I had some sense that I wanted to feel more comfortable and fit into my surroundings. I remember the day I showed up to summer school with my press out and contacts. I felt like a new b*tch. I think that was the first time I looked in the mirror and experienced “dressing up” from my natural state.
How has your relationship with beauty and body image evolved?
Annahstasia Enuke: I think I’m at this point where I’m rapidly returning to my childhood comfort with my body. When I was really young, I was quite the centre of attention. Always telling stories and bringing new friends home from the park. Apparently, I could rap back then and was a better dancer. As I grew up, I got more and more self-conscious and afraid of my expression. It’s hard to point to any particular oppression. But at around 20, I realised how dulled I felt in many aspects of my life.
Have there been times where you’ve felt insecure? How did you overcome this?
Annahstasia Enuke: Yes, I think everyone meets insecurity at some point. In myself, I’ve observed that it usually arises when I know I haven’t done my best, or I haven’t arrived in peak form. But the lesson I’ve learned is to be more patient with my development and allowing it to be visible. No one is truly put together, everyone is working on something and that little reminder makes it a lot easier to just show up and be who you are that day.
What is it about experimenting with your look that you enjoy so much?
Annahstasia Enuke: I love the reintroduction to people I already know and the possibility of meeting strangers as someone I’ve never been. I don’t usually change my look too drastically, but the subtle changes definitely dictate which aspects of my personality shine through. It’s nice to see those versions of myself come out into the open.
Is beauty something you try to capture in your visual work or something that you reject? What is your relationship to “beauty”?
Annahstasia Enuke: I don’t think I pursue any pre-existing ideas of beauty in my work, just what appeals directly to me. Forms inspired by nature, certain colours I find to be luxurious, certain textures I believe to be soothing. I believe beauty is comfort in the soul. So I create with that directive of calming mine and I suppose that’s where the beauty lies.
In your new single “Mutual Agreement" you address your relationship with your hair and shave your head in the video. Can you tell us a bit about what inspired the song and what it means to you?
Annahstasia Enuke: “Mutual Agreement” was a piece of performance art I’d been considering for a while and it’s following track "Sacred Bull" provided a perfect bed for the prose to lie in. I had been trying to grow my hair out just because I was sick of dying it and wanted to experiment with braids and locs and other hairstyles I didn’t have access to with short hair. But in the process of growing it, I was also modelling full time and I experienced such an overt disrespect of the time and labour that goes into textured hair.
Clients would ask me to take out my braids, put in my braids, switch from braids to locs, cut it and dye it pink.... every week a different request, some I acquiesced to and others I said no. But at some point, I was so frustrated with feeling like I didn’t own my own aesthetic choices so I plotted to shave it off in a fairly dramatic way. Hair does hold burdens, holds emotions and memories holds the people that touched it and the air that carried through it. So when you shave it all off you just feel lighter, freer of your yesterday.
We often tie emotional upheaval in our lives to drastic hair decisions. Why do you think we have such an emotional relationship with our hair?
Annahstasia Enuke: I think that dynamic is about control. As women, our hair is a huge signifier to our identity, whether we like it or not people feel they can make accurate judgments based on how we style it. Which can feel very suffocating, feeling like you have to maintain a certain veneer. That ability to take that perception into your own hands is often a simple and relatively independent way to liberate oneself from what event caused the growth you experience. Hair is like our exoskeleton we outgrow it, shed and produce a new one.
How do you think our understanding of beauty has shifted with the evolution of technology?
Annahstasia Enuke: I think it’s a lot easier to follow a hive mind now. And personality is dissociated from beauty online. So the beauty of a person becomes completely dictated by trend almost. I think there is more opportunity for niche now so you can always pursue more reality-based virtues but in terms of what has become “commercial,” it’s almost at trope levels. Like you could assemble “beauty” with a mood board from your discover page. Even if you don’t subscribe to it or curate it for yourself.
What do you think the future of beauty is?
Annahstasia Enuke: I'm not sure, but I hope it becomes more diverse, more accessible and less consumer based.
Full Story Here: Nike model Annahstasia Enuke on the backlash against her underarm hair
newyorkmodels.com/
