This story is a part of The Melanin Edit, a platform in which Allure will explore every facet of a melanin-rich life — from the most innovative treatments for hyperpigmentation to the social and emotional realities — all while spreading Black pride.
Do you remember the song that first gave you all the feels? The one that sent chills up your spine, made your hair stand on end, and stirred up emotions that were maybe a little uncomfortable? Iza does.
Fresh-faced and wrapped in a plush, white terry cloth robe, Isabela Cristina Correia de Lima Lima, stage name Iza, appears on my computer screen and talks about the song that began her musical awakening.
"I was six years old. I didn't have my friends near me, and I didn't have my cousins near me, so I was spending a lot of time alone," she recalls. (Her family had just moved.) “I went into my parents' room and found a Brian McKnight CD called I Remember You, and I skipped to the second song, ‘On the Floor.’ I got these goosebumps, and my first instinct was to turn it off because I felt strange. When my parents went to work, I went [back into their room] and played the CD. I started singing. I had no idea what I was singing or the meaning of the lyrics, but I was singing and feeling and sometimes crying."
Wait… Brian McKnight? The 31-year-old Brazilian singer-songwriter laughs, then adds: “Stevie Wonder; Earth, Wind & Fire; Diana Ross; Donna Summer. My dad loves music, and he has great taste."
Her father's work as an officer in the Brazilian army was why the family relocated from Rio de Janeiro to the coastal city of Natal in northeast Brazil. The move exposed young Iza to new sounds and sights — and the prejudices of her country.
Brazil was the last nation in the Americas to abolish slavery. Emancipation was followed by embranquecimento, an ideology that promoted the mixing of races to "whiten" the overall population. Pardo is a term used to refer to multiracial Brazilians; preto refers specifically to dark-skinned Black Brazilians, like Iza and her family. As with many countries in the Americas, communities of the African diaspora are stratified by skin color.
Unlike Olaria, the neighborhood in Rio where Iza was born, Natal was a predominately white and pardo community. “I was the only Black person. I remember walking into a restaurant and people staring at us,” Iza says. "I was like, 'Mom, why are people looking at me that much?' And she was like, 'Girl, it is because you are so gorgeous. People can't take it. They are looking at you because you're really cute.' I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh. I'm so gorg, yes!’ But when you get older you realize people treat you differently because of the color of your skin."
If Iza's dad gave her R&B, her mom gave her bravery.
An estimated 65 to 120 million Brazilians are of African ancestry. Iza is Afro-Brazilian, as are her parents and grandparents. But Iza recognizes that her experience is different from most men and women who look like her. "Unfortunately, I am an exception here in Brazil. I’m a Black girl with a superior degree, and this is not something that you see a lot," she says of the country's racial inequality. "The Black population is the poorest part of our society."
Statistics support the difficult truth behind Iza’s statement: In Brazil, white people account for 44 percent of the population but earn, on average, 74 percent more than Black or biracial Brazilians. A report published by Minority Rights Group International found that 78 percent of Afro-Brazilians live below the poverty line, compared with 40 percent of whites. The report attributes this socioeconomic gap between Blacks and whites to "discrimination in every aspect of society."
“Growing up, I never saw myself in the media or on TV shows,” Iza recalls. "I didn't see myself anywhere. I was invisible."
Today, Iza is anything but invisible. Though this is her first cover story interview for an international magazine, she was ranked Brazil's most influential celebrity of 2021 in a recent poll. At age 25, Iza left a career in advertising to pursue music full time. She created a YouTube channel and began posting her work to help secure gigs at bars, restaurants, weddings, and graduation balls. Her videos, such as a mash-up of Beyoncé's "Flawless" and Rihanna's "Rude Boy," caught the attention of Warner Music Brasil’s president Sergio Affonso. Following in the footsteps of other discovered-on-YouTube sensations (Anitta and Ludmilla), Iza signed with the label. Her Grammy-nominated debut album, Dona de Mim (Owner of Me), went double platinum, and in 2019 she collaborated with Ciara and Major Lazer on her first international single, "Evapora."
Iza's songs — which mix pop, funk, dancehall, and R&B rhythms — have over 720 million streams on Spotify. She is also on TV (serving as one of the coaches on The Voice Brasil), in the movies (she dubbed over Beyoncé's Nala for The Lion King in Portuguese), and on newsstands (covering Vogue Brasil and GQ Brasil). That's not to mention her social media impact, as her audience nears 30 million across platforms. But perhaps most important to young Black women growing up in Brazil today are Iza's commercial endorsements: Her face is used to sell everything from Garnier to Smirnoff.
"Gueto," the first single from Iza's soon-to-be-released second album, is a celebration of Iza’s commercial success. The lyrics — which translate from Portuguese to "Close the street in the ghetto, there will be samba in the ghetto, play soccer in the ghetto, she is a child from the ghetto, gold sprouts in the ghetto" — are brought to life in a music video directed by Felipe Sassi, Iza's longtime collaborator. She wanted the video to have a lot of symbolism. In one scene, Iza wears bantu knots and lounges in a dressing room where every surface is wrapped in a bubble-gum pink riff on the Gucci monogram print, the classic double Gs replaced with IZA. The next scene shows Iza, now dressed in a leopard-print suit with her hair styled in a full Afro, selling an assortment of cream-based moisturizers for natural textures. The lyrics: "Yeah, yeah, yeah. One more contract for me." Says Iza, "This video is what I wish I had seen as a child."
The one big endorsement deal that Iza does not have (yet) is a hair-care contract, and the significance is not lost on her. Acceptance of natural hair is something new in Brazil.
In preparing for this interview, I came across an essay titled “Natural Black Hair and the Politics of Resistance.” The writer, Dandara Cha, reflects on her country's rigid, Eurocentric beauty standards, where only cabelo liso (straight hair) has traditionally been considered beautiful. She shares stories of Black women in Brazil who have chosen to wear their hair natural. The women describe the months of transition as some of the most difficult in their lives: getting used to new textures, being called ugly, being mistaken for domestic help. But the stories all end with the discovery of self-love, and Iza knows this journey all too well.
“When I was young, like 12 years old, I asked mom to let me relax my hair. I was like, ‘Please!’ I couldn't take it anymore at school. I just wanted to fit in,” Iza recalls. "But also, I didn't have the tools [or products] to take care of [my natural hair]. The fact is, it's really hard to build self-love when the market, when the world, doesn't give you the right brushes."
In a moment of self-reflection, Iza admits that this reasoning eventually became a sort of crutch for her; she continued to relax her hair for years even after she had access to the right products. Ultimately, "relaxing my hair was giving me so much trouble," she says. "I used to say it was my natural hair that gave me so much work." Finally, along with her younger cousins, she began making the transition from relaxed hair to wearing it natural.
“I was 21 years old, and I was like, 'Okay, I'm going to go natural.' I just wanted to look at myself with my natural hair and see how I looked. I wanted to know my hair,” Iza says. "We are living together in the same house, and we didn't know each other. And so I was like, ‘I have to meet my hair and see what happens.’"
As seen on Iza's Instagram feed and in her music videos, she is constantly switching it up, experimenting with a variety of looks. Because the true act of resistance, according to Iza, isn’t just showing off her curl pattern. "I don't have to wear my natural hair. I don't have to relax my hair. I have to do what I want to do," she says.
“First, [Black women] were attacked for our natural hair because our natural hair was seen as dirty, damaged, and we were always the target of racist jokes and all the bad stuff. But we still wore it that way,” Iza points out, “knowing that our boss could call our hair 'inappropriate' or that our boyfriend may not think we're 'beautiful' anymore. It was political because we were saying, 'I'm wearing it natural anyway. I don't care what you think.' This was the first moment of resistance, which was really necessary.”
“But what I think is also necessary,” Iza continues, “is to spread the word that we Black women, and women in general, are free to use and be whatever we want. If I want to go natural, I'm going to go natural. If I want to shave my head, I will shave my head. And if I want to go straight and blonde, I'm going straight and blonde.”
“I am not my hair,” she says. "I am bigger than this."
Four thousand miles away, I can feel the power of those words. This woman who once struggled with self-confidence is now using her platform to create awareness of the challenges of being Black in Brazil — while simultaneously looking those challenges dead in the eye and overcoming them herself. I confess to being annoyed that it wasn't Iza’s face plastered across my computer screen when I researched Brazilian beauty prior to our interview. Because if anyone can help the world see the true beauty of this complex nation — which is currently up in flames socially, politically, and environmentally — it is Iza.
She sees it slightly differently.
“It is heartwarming when people say that I am a symbol of beauty in Brazil. But I always say that I can represent some people but only some people because I cannot represent all Black women," Iza notes. "We are plural. We are so different. We need more space."
Photographed by: Thaís Vandanezi
Fashion stylist: Bianca Jahara
Hair: Maia Boitrago
Makeup: Mary Saavedra
Production: Litmedia
Retoucher: Bruno Resende
Videographer: Joao Freitas de Almeida
Video editors: Matheus Menegoi, Ingrid Frahm
