IT WAS AT THE END OF 2020 THAT I MET ROSA ON INSTAGRAM. SHE IS ONE OF THOSE INTERNET USERS WHOSE FACE WE REMEMBER, WHOSE WAY OF EXPRESSING OURSELVES WE RECOGNIZE WHEN SEEING A STORY GO BY, WHO INFRIDES US WITH HER VERY PERSONAL WAY OF LIVING HER FEMININITY.
BEFORE MEETING HER, I COULD NOT HAVE IMAGINED THAT BEHIND THIS APPARENT MOTORCYCLE FAN, SELF-TAUGHT POLE DANCER AND BIKINI DESIGNER, STANDS A REAL FREE AND CONSCIOUS SPIRIT, RICH IN HER EXPERIENCES IN THE FAVELAS OF BRAZIL OR THE STRIP CLUBS OF MIAMI.
IF SHE HAD TO TALK ABOUT HERSELF, ROSA WOULD ANSWER WITH HUMOUR AND DETERMINATION: “ I WANT TO LIVE THE LIFE OF A RICH OLD MAN. I WANT TO BECOME BERNARD TAPIE. ”
Standing in the center of her apartment in Val-de-Marne, you can't miss her. " You can try if you want, " Rosa tells me, pointing to her pole dance bar. All around it, roller skates, boxing gloves, several motorcycle helmets, sky-high heels, and bags overflowing with colorful bikinis litter the floor. So many pieces of evidence that allow me to better understand the woman I'm meeting for the first time. Outside the Internet, I mean. On the homepage of her website, Rosa quotes Madonna : "I'm strong, ambitious and I know exactly what I want. If that makes me a slut, no problem ." Moreover, the name of her bikini brand, La Piri, says a lot about the young woman's editorial line and target audience. This name would be the diminutive of “ Piriguete ”, literally a dangerous woman, “ who has fun, flirts and goes out a lot ” but also and above all, who is “ free and independent ”.
When I meet Rosa, she has been launching her brand for two months. Still in the “test” stage, as she explains, she offers swimsuits in bright colors reminiscent of granites, reversible and ultra-revealing. “My goal would be to create some in the style of Amber Rose. But I was afraid of being too young to arrive with this approach in launch .”
Now bikini-oriented, Rosa would like all women to eventually be able to shop on La Piri, selling bikinis as well as lingerie, burkinis and durags. Without playing the game of “cultural appropriation ” and “inclusivity at all costs ”, the designer would like us to stop “making all these women into antinomies” . La Piri should shout sisterhood.
If she is so proud of it, it is because her brand is for the young woman the culmination of years of “ struggles ”, both psychological and material. Born in the Paris region, Rosa then moved “ all over France ”, to finally fall in love with the South, and more particularly with Marseille. After her baccalaureate, she began studying design there, without imagining for a second that she would end up “ drastically ” leaving the most classic paths of working life.
Rosa gives little importance to the chronology of events, and tells the stories as she remembers, as one would read a film synopsis. From buying her first thong swimsuit, to becoming aware of her internal misogyny at 16, to meeting “ a guy on a train, when I was coming back from my best friend’s wedding who told me about a fashion school that had just opened in Brazil ”, and her very first striptease in Miami, introduced by a “Slovenian girl like Pamela Anderson” , be careful not to lose the thread.
Across the Atlantic, Rosa's initiatory journey began in Rio, at the first favela fashion school, Casa Geraçao. " The designer (editor's note: Nadine Gonzalez) returned to France afterwards and the school became Casa 93. I made her posters ." Except that in Brazil, the one who was still quite modest found herself confronted with an excessive exposure of the female body. Of all women, without classification. " It's another form of machismo. In France, it's more like "Hey! Don't look at my wife, she's so beautiful" and in Brazil it's more like "Look at my wife how beautiful she is in her string bikini. If I had to choose machismo, I preferred that one ." While she deplores a society borrowing from rape culture, Rosa discovered another approach to the liberation of the female body and sexuality. Without knowing it, the beginnings of her brand were taking shape. But more importantly, she was taking power over her own bodily envelope.
When she returned from Brazil, Rosa had her head full, but this adventurer background was not enough to get her hired. “I did all the jobs: from waitress in Indiana where they let off steam, they slap your butt; you were the maid; to saleswoman at the drugstore on the Champs, where I only worked to pay my rent .” The lack of money coupled with her sudden independence pushed her to live according to the people she met. “ A period of real struggle where nothing went as planned, ” says Rosa, laughing bitterly. It was her chance meeting with DJ Cut Killer that triggered something in her: “ He told me that I had nothing to complain about because I was young, white, beautiful, that I didn’t live in the suburbs, that I hadn’t even been raped. And that shocked me a lot, because he didn’t know anything about it.” But at the same time, I knew he was right. I couldn't let it go."
“ In 1 year, you change your life ,” the DJ tells her. With the American dream in her sights, Rosa first continues her quest in South Africa for an internship: “ There, I met American women who, despite my preconceptions about Florida, convinced me to go .” That’s how, with 1,500 euros in her pocket, she gets hired via Skype as a designer in an American agency, leaves France and finds herself on the beach in Miami. Alone. Without an apartment. But full of desire.
It was at this point that she told me again about an encounter, perhaps even THE encounter that changed her life. “ In front of my apartment, I separated a Slovenian woman from a French man in conflict. A French man I knew, since I had met him in a club a few days earlier .” Through conversation with this woman, whom she thought was Slovenian, and who took a dislike to her at first, Rose learned about the domestic violence that this neighbor was suffering. This is how the young French woman discovered that this woman, older than her, was a stripper. “ And the twist was that I became a stripper too.”
Soon, her neighbor took her to a strip club for the first time, to show her what it was all about. “ I had never done anything like that before, not even pole dancing. And I was a bit prudish: in the evening I was used to wearing long turtleneck dresses. I couldn't even wear a tank top. And then, in 2-2, I found myself completely naked on stage .” She explained to me that from then on, her relationship with her body had completely changed. “ You strip, your skin becomes your jumpsuit. You become a salamander. You no longer have any complexes. I still had my modesty, but it was no longer affected by the sight of my naked body. I didn't force myself to do anything, that's why I enjoyed it so much.”
With as much lightness as lucidity, Rosa multiplies the anecdotes about her life as a “sex worker”, without having sex, but money. Lots of money. Some amuse me, some shock me. “ During the day, I was a designer, which allowed me to keep my feet on the ground. And at night, or when I was bored, when it rained, I made money. Sometimes in front of 1200 men. With that, I knew that I would never struggle again in my life ”.
With nostalgia in her eyes when she delves into her memory, Rosa does not abandon her frankness in any way. This activity will have left some more harmful traces on her vision of the world, her relationship with others... “ I realized very quickly that even with a Master's degree, I will never make as much money as in a few nights of stripping. And people support that ”. And then according to her, too much money dehumanizes. So today, she says she has trouble giving her time “ for free ” to those who covet it. “ I ended up seeing a 100 bill as a 10 bill. In hindsight, it wasn’t empowering to take money from men, but there was an undeniable form of revenge against the patriarchy .” Still, years after her trip to Miami and the trauma that followed, if she had the chance, Rosa would happily go back to dancing. But this time, just for the fun of it.
"A Real Girl for me is someone who will define herself by her actions. What are you doing behind your pretty face? For too long, girls were at home, we didn't see them, and were immobile. We were figurines. The strippers, the Piris, they are girls in motion. Walkers."
Written by Claire. Photos Lyna. @VraiesMeufs. Thank you for your good energy and support.
