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American Morning

Extreme Makeover

Aired October 28, 2003 - 07:54   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Fighting continues on the Afghan border with Pakistan, where at least 10 suspected Taliban were killed in a clash with U.S. and Afghan troops on Sunday. The area along Pakistan's border has been the scene of fierce battles in recent months, while in Kabul much has changed in the two years since the fall of the Taliban, especially for Afghan women. Lifting the veil has not been easy. Progress has been slow, but there are some success stories.
"Vogue" magazine, in its November issue, covers one of those stories -- a beauty school in Kabul whose graduates may have just as much to do with democracy as they have to do with hair and makeup.

"Vogue's" senior writer Julia Reed visited the school and joins us.

Nice to have you.

JULIA REED, SENIOR WRITER, "VOGUE": Thank you. It's nice to be here.

O'BRIEN: Thanks for coming in to talk about this.

And I've got to tell you, we were talking in the break, I was a little dubious at first, a beauty school. Ooh, just what Kabul needs, a beauty school. Let's talk a little bit about the infrastructure. You were there in August. You saw how bad things are. What are they missing?

REED: Well, they're missing pretty much everything. There is very little infrastructure. I mean, this little school that "Vogue" and the beauty industry kind of came together to build is by far the nicest building in Kabul at this moment, because even the presidential palace has sort of got lots of holes in it. I mean, there is no real traffic control. There are no roads. Everything has sort of fallen apart.

I mean, you've got to remember that it's been sort of a war-torn place for more than 25 years, and there hadn't been a central government until the last couple of years. So, there is nothing.

O'BRIEN: And it's a huge social change for the women who went from being horribly repressed under the Taliban to getting some freedom. So, why a beauty school? I mean, it seems frivolous, frankly.

REED: Well, it does. And even I, who work for "Vogue," was a little skeptical. I thought, oh, lord, let this be real. But -- and it is. Women, as you know, had been under the veil since the Taliban came in 1996. And so, they were literally in a body sleeve -- I mean, completely covered up. And these were women who were pretty westernized. I mean, this is a westernized Islamic nation. They were wearing miniskirts and high heels.

And, you know, one of the traditions for women were to own their own small businesses, which were beauty parlors just like it is here, in little towns and in Kabul. And so, you know, this is sort of a normal thing for women to make their living doing. But when the Taliban came, it was illegal for them to work.

O'BRIEN: They went underground.

REED: They went underground, and a lot of them risked their lives, literally, by running these little beauty parlors in their homes. They'd have to hide their tools, which were very rudimentary anyway. But it was touching to me to find out that they were really willing to risk their lives and to risk imprisonment just to have these little beauty shops, even though nobody could see them, underneath the burqa, which is literally like a sleeve. Because for their own little -- I mean, everything had been taken away from them at that.

O'BRIEN: Because it's not really, it seemed to me from your article, it was not necessarily all about the beauty but really more about opportunity and looking forward to...

(CROSSTALK)

REED: Yes, I think during the Taliban's rule, it was about we're retaining some kind of shred of dignity, and than also to make a little bit of money to feed their families. I mean, their husbands were out of work, many of them were widowed from the Soviet era.

So, now, it's like this is one of the few things that they can kind of come out of the box doing in a place where there is just really still a pile of rubble. There are all of these beauty salons popping up on every block. You know, the ones that started them in their homes are continuing.

What we're doing is teaching them how to do it better.

COSTELLO: Cosmetics have been donated. And also, probably even more importantly, they're teaching...

REED: Clairol donated like an amazing curriculum, and they check it by e-mail once a week. And so, the first class has graduated. There is a waiting list of hundreds. And it really is an opportunity for these women to support themselves and their families when there is not a whole lot of -- I mean, it's slow getting out of the box over there. There is not a lot going on.

But they're so happy to be out of that burqa. It's just amazing to see how exuberant they are, even though they have, like, electricity for an hour a day, and they're having to scrap to make this living.

O'BRIEN: It's nice to have some, you know, occasional good news stories to report from there. Julia Reed, senior writer for "Vogue" magazine. The article is really interesting, it's fascinating.

REED: Thank you.

O'BRIEN: Thanks for joining us to talk about it this morning.

REED: I loved being here.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.







Aired October 28, 2003 - 07:54   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Fighting continues on the Afghan border with Pakistan, where at least 10 suspected Taliban were killed in a clash with U.S. and Afghan troops on Sunday. The area along Pakistan's border has been the scene of fierce battles in recent months, while in Kabul much has changed in the two years since the fall of the Taliban, especially for Afghan women. Lifting the veil has not been easy. Progress has been slow, but there are some success stories.
"Vogue" magazine, in its November issue, covers one of those stories -- a beauty school in Kabul whose graduates may have just as much to do with democracy as they have to do with hair and makeup.

"Vogue's" senior writer Julia Reed visited the school and joins us.

Nice to have you.

JULIA REED, SENIOR WRITER, "VOGUE": Thank you. It's nice to be here.

O'BRIEN: Thanks for coming in to talk about this.

And I've got to tell you, we were talking in the break, I was a little dubious at first, a beauty school. Ooh, just what Kabul needs, a beauty school. Let's talk a little bit about the infrastructure. You were there in August. You saw how bad things are. What are they missing?

REED: Well, they're missing pretty much everything. There is very little infrastructure. I mean, this little school that "Vogue" and the beauty industry kind of came together to build is by far the nicest building in Kabul at this moment, because even the presidential palace has sort of got lots of holes in it. I mean, there is no real traffic control. There are no roads. Everything has sort of fallen apart.

I mean, you've got to remember that it's been sort of a war-torn place for more than 25 years, and there hadn't been a central government until the last couple of years. So, there is nothing.

O'BRIEN: And it's a huge social change for the women who went from being horribly repressed under the Taliban to getting some freedom. So, why a beauty school? I mean, it seems frivolous, frankly.

REED: Well, it does. And even I, who work for "Vogue," was a little skeptical. I thought, oh, lord, let this be real. But -- and it is. Women, as you know, had been under the veil since the Taliban came in 1996. And so, they were literally in a body sleeve -- I mean, completely covered up. And these were women who were pretty westernized. I mean, this is a westernized Islamic nation. They were wearing miniskirts and high heels.

And, you know, one of the traditions for women were to own their own small businesses, which were beauty parlors just like it is here, in little towns and in Kabul. And so, you know, this is sort of a normal thing for women to make their living doing. But when the Taliban came, it was illegal for them to work.

O'BRIEN: They went underground.

REED: They went underground, and a lot of them risked their lives, literally, by running these little beauty parlors in their homes. They'd have to hide their tools, which were very rudimentary anyway. But it was touching to me to find out that they were really willing to risk their lives and to risk imprisonment just to have these little beauty shops, even though nobody could see them, underneath the burqa, which is literally like a sleeve. Because for their own little -- I mean, everything had been taken away from them at that.

O'BRIEN: Because it's not really, it seemed to me from your article, it was not necessarily all about the beauty but really more about opportunity and looking forward to...

(CROSSTALK)

REED: Yes, I think during the Taliban's rule, it was about we're retaining some kind of shred of dignity, and than also to make a little bit of money to feed their families. I mean, their husbands were out of work, many of them were widowed from the Soviet era.

So, now, it's like this is one of the few things that they can kind of come out of the box doing in a place where there is just really still a pile of rubble. There are all of these beauty salons popping up on every block. You know, the ones that started them in their homes are continuing.

What we're doing is teaching them how to do it better.

COSTELLO: Cosmetics have been donated. And also, probably even more importantly, they're teaching...

REED: Clairol donated like an amazing curriculum, and they check it by e-mail once a week. And so, the first class has graduated. There is a waiting list of hundreds. And it really is an opportunity for these women to support themselves and their families when there is not a whole lot of -- I mean, it's slow getting out of the box over there. There is not a lot going on.

But they're so happy to be out of that burqa. It's just amazing to see how exuberant they are, even though they have, like, electricity for an hour a day, and they're having to scrap to make this living.

O'BRIEN: It's nice to have some, you know, occasional good news stories to report from there. Julia Reed, senior writer for "Vogue" magazine. The article is really interesting, it's fascinating.

REED: Thank you.

O'BRIEN: Thanks for joining us to talk about it this morning.

REED: I loved being here.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.