Journey | Metamorphosis: Akua Auset
by Gail Mitchell
Noted celebrity makeup artist, Akua Auset (pronounced, Ah-koo-wa Ah-set), has groomed and transformed faces for TV, film, music videos and magazine projects for the past 12 plus years. She has worked on projects with 100+ celebrities and personalities including: Michael Jordan, Jill Scott, India.arie, Tasha Smith, Vivica A. Fox, Brad Pitt, Laila Ali, Blair Underwood, Natalie Cole, Pam Grier, Cheryl Tiegs, R. Kelly, Usher, and others.
In addition, Auset is an author of SUPERWOMEN & GODDESSES: Workin' Your Power & Magic, Book One (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/
0979216109?ie=UTF8&seller=A1631IWSR5WE3L&sn=a-point-of-light) and the creator of 9 1/2 Weeks: The METAMOORPHOSE Project™. During weekly sessions, masters of health, beauty & wellness guide a group of men, women and teens on a nine-and-a-half week journey to get the transformation they've always wanted.
And, yes she wears locs. Loc’d Life Magazine talked with Akua about true beauty, healing, and locs.
Tell me about yourself and what you do.
Well, in a nutshell, I would say I strive everyday to be a goddess, and what that means is someone who inspires life into everything that they touch, so whether that be makeup—which I’m known for—whether it be facilitating a project or a program to assist people with transforming their lives, or whether I’m just hanging out with a group of people, or having a meal, that’s my goal. That’s the intention. Sometimes I fail, sometimes I do really well. That’s the goal. And I have a book called Superwomen and Goddesses and the definition that I came up with for goddess is a female that inspires life in everything that she touches.
What is the Metamoorphose project?
9 ½ Weeks: The Metamoorphose Project is a magical journey where a group of people spend Sundays together working on all the elements of wellness and beauty. So every week we have a pantheon of healers, and gurus and experts in the area of beauty of wellness that come and share their wisdom with the participants. We meet from 2-5 p.m. every Sunday for these weeks, and we focus on one element at a time on wellness—like the breath, holistic skincare, and sexual vitality—so that each week, as the participants come back, they’re building on the previous week’s information. Little by little, the participants transform and evolve their bodies, their mindsets, their lives. And the end of the 9½ weeks, we have a completion evening which we watch a film and witness their journey. There’s an opportunity for family and friends to come and see those participants be acknowledged for all they have accomplished.
What is the typical age?
Fortunately there isn’t a typical age. We’ve had participants as young as 13 and senior as late 60s. And their background and ages are really diverse. I think it’s just highly appealing to most people, and unfortunately, we have mostly women. We’d like to get more men involved. We’ve only had one man so far, but it’s really open to everybody, because who doesn’t want to be healthier and more attractive? Who doesn’t have talents and abilities and gifts that they want to manifest into contributing to the community? Those three things pretty much resonate with everybody.
What inspired you do this?
I’m 43, and I at about the age of 30 I began to be really tired, being sickly, having headaches and not being really up to par to my health, and I said I’m only 30. Why am I not feeling well?
At that time of my life, I ran into a man who taught about eating and cleansing your body—about a whole different mindset of living. He was based in Los Angeles, California. I was living in Los Angeles at the time, and it was really through meeting him and listening to some of his lectures that I really began to transform my life. Now, granted, I thought I was pretty healthy. I wasn’t eating junk food or fast food everyday, so I thought based on those things, I was pretty healthy. But what I learned is that it takes a lot more than that to be healthy.
So I was thinking, I’m 30 years old. I don’t know what carbs are, and all these other things: vitamins and minerals. I didn’t really understand how to take care of this magnificent machine that I’m in 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. I didn’t know anything about how to take care of my body. I wondered, Why aren’t we taught that in school? There should be a one-on-one class on our bodies, on understanding how to get the best performance and how to best take care of them. And I always felt quite overwhelmed about it, and I think most people are. There’s so much information out there. You hit the Internet, and everybody’s an expert on this diet and what you should eat for this or that. It can be quite overwhelming. That was back in 2000 that I began to think of 9 ½ Weeks, so I moved here to Chicago, and launched it in 2008.
9 ½ Weeks is my effort to simplify the basics on how one takes care of themselves and can feel empowered knowing exactly what their bodies need. When I moved to Chicago, I realized there were so many teachers and leaders in the area of beauty and wellness. It was the perfect opportunity of desire and resources that came together.
What inspired you to get locs? What was your inspiration?
Emancipation. (laughing) Freedom. I think for any woman—it doesn’t matter what culture she comes from or what hair she has, if she’s waking up in the morning and doing something to it, that’s the opposite of what her hair does naturally. You kind of become in bondage to your hairstyle. At the age of 4 my mother relaxed my hair, she straightened the natural curl out of it, and as the hair grows back you get the natural hair back. You’re constantly fighting against nature. So for me, allowing my hair to just grow naturally and loc’d, was my way to free myself from the bondage of my hair. And it seems, specifically, women of color who have curly hair have some way of straightening it. So if it rains, if you sweat, if there’s some type of water situation, your hair’s going to go curly again.
I realized one day that my entire life revolved around what my hair was going to do, and that just wasn’t acceptable anymore because there’s no freedom in that. I was looking at my straightened hair, and it just didn’t look beautiful to me anymore.
So my first step was to stop relaxing my hair. The second step was to only texturize it, and I had cut it off to about an inch and a half, two inches and just wore it curly. After that I saw a style with long twists and I liked that style. So I went to a natural hair salon in L.A. They looked at my hair and said that as long as you have any type of chemical in it, they can’t do anything with it. The whole time it’s been “straight hair, straight hair”, and now they’re telling me they can’t do anything with the straight hair. It’s kind of like a reverse thing. It was kind of shocking.
They suggested that I wore braids so that the hair could grow out. I wore individual braids for a year and a half to grow my hair out natural. So I got this done every 2½ , every three months, and got someone to do that process. There was an instance where that person was out of town and not available, and I had a business event to go to. I took it out, and I’m in the bathroom, taking the braids out and I noticed how soft it was. There were no chemicals in it. It was soft, and after I took it out, I was like, Wow, I have never seen my natural hair before. There’s an aspect of myself that I’ve never known. I was 30 years old and I’ve never seen my natural hair. It was really a profound moment. I saw that that it had a curly pattern with it. It was wavy. So I began to work with it, wearing it twisted, wearing it natural. After a year of doing that, I thought, This was way too much work, having natural hair. So I kept my twists. I just began to lock my hair. You could not have told me that in 1996, and that was when I began my career in makeup, in the entertainment industry, that I would be someone that wears locs, because my whole mindset was not that.
From the moment I cut my hair down and started wearing it natural with texturizer I got a whole different reaction especially from men. Men—all kinds of men—tell me how beautiful my hair is. If you’re a woman who’s walking around in bondage to your hair, that energy that translates, and that’s probably not as attractive as someone who is comfortable with themselves. I think that when you are your authentic self, it’s appealing. There’s a comfort and a flow from just being yourself.
To become a part of 9 ½ Weeks, The Metamoorphose Project, visit www.akua-auset.com or call 877-896-6846. She is also currently working on her second book.