A Cuban resident in England surprised her followers by sharing on TikTok a custom she has not been able to give up despite living in the United Kingdom: shaping her hair with a roll of toilet paper instead of purchasing the accessories used by English women.
The creator, known as @mare_rycroft, posted a 25-second video last Wednesday in which she humorously contrasts her Cuban habit with that of British women. "The English women spending money on hair accessories, and me as a Cuban using what I have," she says at the beginning of the clip.
The author poses a direct question to her community: "Who else like me used a roll of toilet paper to style their hair in Cuba?" And she unapologetically defends the practice: "It's quick, yes, and inexpensive."
What may seem like a simple anecdote conceals a deeper reality. In Cuba, even toilet paper was a scarce item, making its use for styling hair, as she herself admits, "a luxury." Cuban women would improvise rollers using waste materials such as cardboard, plastic tubing, or paper due to the chronic shortage of beauty products.
This practice is part of what many Cubans call "cacharra": the culture of reuse and adaptation born from decades of scarcity. Cuban habits such as turning the oil bottle upside down, saving plastic bags, or squeezing out every last bit from a tube of toothpaste are habits that the diaspora has taken with them to Europe and America.
The video by @mare_rycroft fits into a trend that has been prominent on TikTok since at least 2025. Cubans carrying the customs of underdevelopment share them on social media as a form of humor, nostalgia, and collective identity, generating empathy among Latinos from various countries.
Other Cuban accounts on TikTok have showcased similar practices, such as using rolls of paper as curlers or cutting shampoo tubes to add water and make the most of every drop. Things that reveal having grown up in a Cuban family have become viral content that resonates with both Cubans and other Latinos in Europe.
The Cuban community in the United Kingdom is particularly active on social media. A former Cuban gymnast in England initially worked at a recycling plant before saving up to obtain his truck driver’s license, and other compatriots daily share their experiences of adapting to life in Britain by blending Cuban culture with local reality.
The ingenuity in the face of scarcity, transformed into identity, travels with every Cuban who emigrates. As another voice from the diaspora summarizes: “Emigrating is working while missing home”, growing without witnesses and achieving things that those who remained will never be able to see.
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