Black Hairstyles: Braiding

Braiding. I used to hate this particular part of my life. My tender head would feel every tug and pull and every knot untangled felt like torture. Of course, my auntie couldn’t care less, if anything I swore she loved hearing me cry out in pain. Her rat-tailed comb and a bottle of grease was the ban of my existence. My butt would hurt from hours of sitting down on the wooden floors when all I ever wanted to do was play around with my brothers. When my aunt would get up to boil the hot water, I would steal a quick glance in the mirror and cry. The way those chunky braids looked on my fat forehead always made me mad 😂. I wanted my bone straight hair back.

That was young me. The younger me that soon realized my natural hair texture wasn’t even straight. Now I can’t even imagine going through an entire year without some sort of braided style. I honestly don’t know how some girls can do Bantu Knots and a Wash N Go every day. Honestly, salute to you, sis. I am a really lazy person when it comes to doing my natural hair, to the point that I’m already wiped out after shampooing and conditioning. I mean between wearing my wigs, braids are my go-to protective style look.

Black Hair Appropriation

So we all know for the past couple of years there have been some issues with the appropriation of different cultures. In this post, I want to talk more specifically about the appropriation of black hair. Magazines such as Vogue and Elle have been known to feature non-black people in black hairstyles and call it “innovative” and “fierce.”

When Kim Kardashian attended the MTV awards in 2018 she called her Fulani braids “Bo-Derek braids”. I mean…

via GIPHY

I think if you are going to use a certain aspect of someone’s culture you should at least have the decency to acknowledge that. Hair to me is more than just a trend or hashtag. It is a part of our identity and what makes us uniquely beautiful. Hair is inherent to one’s race (and can be closely associated with “racial, ethnic, or cultural identities”).

Ignorance is not bliss

See I dont care about people from different backgrounds wearing box braids or dreads. What bothers me is the fact that when other people that are NOT black do something African Americans have done for years it is considered “Beautiful”. However, when I try to wear my fro or waist-length box braids I look unprofessional? I look like someone who is coming off as too black and political for you? New York actually banned the discrimination of black hair because people would actually lose or couldn’t find jobs because of something that grows naturally from their heads. When I was younger I had to perm my hair bone straight. I didn’t get to see what my natural hair looked like until my freshman year of college. The reason for that is because my mom coming straight from Nigeria thought the best way to assimilate into America was to have straight black hair. That I wouldn’t look like a poor village girl to my white counterparts. The fact that she and so many people have to think like this is a sad reality. A reality we are slowly shifting. Check out this documentary ELLE made that speaks more about the effects of appropriating black hair. It made me feel good to know that people are acknowledging this as something that is offensive to a huge demographic of people.