Zahra Gor­don

In the days lead­ing up to her talk at the TEDx Port-of-Spain event on De­cem­ber 12, Trinidad-born beau­ty blog­ger Patrice Grell Yur­sik of Afro­bel­la.com couldn't shake some un­ex­plain­able nerves.

"There's some­thing about com­ing home that is more nerver­ack­ing for me be­cause I'm go­ing to look in the au­di­ence and my par­ents are there, my high-school ge­og­ra­phy teacher is there and all these oth­er peo­ple who I know so there's some­thing very weird about that ex­pe­ri­ence and very out of body," said Yur­sik dur­ing an in­ter­view at Medul­la Art Gallery on De­cem­ber 7.

At Medul­la, Yur­sik met with young lo­cal de­sign­ers and fash­ion en­thu­si­asts par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Style Spir­it Week­end. The dis­cus­sion cov­ered not on­ly the birth of her Web site, but al­so in­clud­ed ad­vice on mar­ket­ing one's brand.

Both events were speak­ing en­gage­ments Yur­sik didn't see her­self giv­ing six years ago when she found­ed Afro­bel­la.com. Now, she's al­ready booked past March for 2013 and still wrap­ping her mind around fame and fans. In 2009, Yur­sik took on blog­ging full time when she re­signed from her cal­en­dar ed­i­tor po­si­tion at a Mi­a­mi news­pa­per. The job was "sti­fling" and Yur­sik said she felt as though her dreams were dy­ing.

Afro­bel­la.com fo­cus­es on nat­ur­al hair, cul­ture, style and beau­ty prod­ucts for black women. The tag line is "all shades of beau­ti­ful" and Yur­sik set out to cel­e­brate black beau­ty that was some­what un­con­ven­tion­al. When Yur­sik start­ed out, nat­ur­al hair blog­ging was a niche mar­ket-she was fill­ing a void-leav­ing some to re­fer to her as the God­moth­er of the now bur­geon­ing brown beau­ty blog­ging in­dus­try.

Her God­moth­er sta­tus has lead Yur­sik to be fea­tured in and con­tribute to mag­a­zines like Essence, Ebony, Glam­our and Ital­ian Vogue. She has in­ter­viewed celebri­ties such as singer Janelle Mon­ae, mu­si­cian Es­per­an­za Spald­ing and ac­tors Phyli­cia Rashad and Sanaa Lath­an.

The week be­fore com­ing to T&T, the Bish­op Anstey High School alum­na was cho­sen to launch Mi­crosoft's new tablet com­put­er Sur­face.?Last year, she worked with cos­met­ics mak­er MAC to cre­ate a lip­gloss called All Of My Pur­ple Life and she's been work­ing with US de­part­ment store Tar­get on pro­mot­ing its line of mul­ti­cul­tur­al beau­ty prod­ucts. In Jan­u­ary she heads to Las Ve­gas for the Blog World New Me­dia Ex­po. Yur­sik is al­so on Ebony Mag­a­zine's Pow­er 100 list along with the Oba­mas, Jay-Z and Oprah Win­frey.

"Some­times it feels very sur­re­al, like it's not my life, but it is, and I have to be present in the mo­ment and very ap­pre­cia­tive for all of it. It's weird and it's cool and it's beau­ti­ful. Def­i­nite­ly, be­ing ap­pre­ci­at­ed for what you do is a won­der­ful thing."

With the grow­ing in­ter­est in beau­ty prod­ucts tar­get­ing black women and specif­i­cal­ly nat­ur­al hair, Yur­sik has had to re-eval­u­ate her per­spec­tives on the na­ture of the trend.

"I used to say that it's not a trend but a lifestyle and a move­ment. But there are def­i­nite­ly peo­ple who dab­ble. I've had ex­pe­ri­ences where I re­alise peo­ple are try­ing to trade on my au­then­tic­i­ty," she said.

"All of a sud­den com­pa­nies that fo­cus main­ly on mak­ing re­lax­er are notic­ing re­lax­er isn't sell­ing any more, but they don't use those (nat­ur­al) in­gre­di­ents, so they just use the same crap they al­ways use and put 'nat­ur­al' on it and put it in a brown bot­tle."

How­ev­er, when it comes to the busi­ness of brown beau­ty blog­ging and nat­ur­al hair care, the pos­i­tive out­weighs the neg­a­tive for the Chica­go res­i­dent.

"There are so many hair com­pa­nies now where I per­son­al­ly know the women who start­ed in their kitchens or some lit­tle lab and now their prod­ucts have be­come mass mar­ket. It's re­al­ly cool to see that nat­ur­al hair has al­lowed a lot of women to flour­ish. I hope that hap­pens in T&T as well," she said.

Thanks to the in­ter­net, that flour­ish­ing may not be far away, says Yur­sik, who's no­ticed more warmth to­wards her large afro lo­cal­ly in re­cent years. "I think there's been a broad­en­ing of the minds. In the past it used to take us longer to catch on to in­ter­na­tion­al trends but I re­al­ly think the in­ter­net has changed all of that. The youth of Trinidad is on Face­book, Twit­ter and In­sta­gram and we are ap­pre­ci­at­ing the wider au­di­ence. It's changed things."

She shared that a few years ago, while vis­it­ing T&T, an ac­quain­tance asked her, quite rude­ly, whether or not a brush could pass through her hair. When Yur­sik vis­it­ed again this year in Jan­u­ary, how­ev­er, the very same per­son re­marked at how well she looked. She be­lieves T&T is be­gin­ning to ac­cept dif­fer­ence.

"Dif­fer­ence is ok. Not every­body has to look the same and dress the same and think the same. I see that more now. When I used to live here as a teenag­er I felt the need to fit in to what oth­er peo­ple were wear­ing, but I don't feel like that any­more and I don't think a lot of peo­ple feel like that any­more. Maybe it's al­so a grow­ing up thing."

There's still a long way to go be­fore ac­cept­ing dif­fer­ences be­comes the norm, how­ev­er. Last year Yur­sik, who al­so blogs about plus-size fash­ion post­ed a pho­to of her­self in a pur­ple swim­suit.

Over­whelm­ing­ly, the com­ments were pos­i­tive but there was that one per­son likened her to the chil­dren's char­ac­ter Bar­ney. The com­ment hurt, but did not shake Yur­sik's con­fi­dence. Af­ter de­cid­ing

not to re­spond to the com­ment, Yur­sik no­ticed that she didn't need to. "I didn't even have to say any­thing be­cause my fans set him straight for me."