Before the latest anti-black dysfunction adopted by many black people who have not worked through their color racism and hair texture discrimination, was slapped on top of the current “natural hair” phenom encouraging black women to embrace the hair that grows out of their scalps and it became all about achieving loose waves and ringlets, there was this:
Vintage Afro Sheen ad
Look! Hair that looks shiny, moisturized with no dry ends or single strand snarls!
AND NOT A MANUFACTURED CURL PATTERN IN SIGHT.
It’s an A-F-R-O.
Just a hairstyle…..
The ONLY act of militancy from wearing a legitimate afro TODAY is doing so in the midst of BLACK PEOPLE!
No texturizing, heat-training required. No Bantu-Knot, Marley Braid-Out, Two-Strand Twist, Roller Set, or a $200 product list and 50 minute DAILY morning regime in sight. The ORIGINAL WASH-N-GO!!! And I believe the fro didn’t shrink in humidity. No number-type categorization, no mixed-gals or poly-racial ad campaigns (i.e. Carol’s Daughter, Shea Moisture) either….
A ‘REGULAR’ BLACK WOMAN…AND HER DAUGHTER.
THIS IS HOW B-L-A-C-K Women and Heritage GETS ERASED:
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I thought I should mention that I stopped chemically processing my hair about four 1/2 years ago. It wasn’t a deliberate decision, I just got tired of not seeing certain results I wanted with my hair and shifted my budget elsewhere. I had no idea there were so many hair blogs and YouTube channels devoted to “natural hair”. I’ve skimmed through most of the sites and vlogs since and even shared a few here on the main site and on our social media channels.
I even posted some photos of my first blow-out after a long-needed haircut a few weeks ago. My hair felt like cotton candy and while I liked wearing it straight for a few hours, I’m used to my curls. While I don’t pay direct attention to most of black-related media, I can count on many part of those channels to exchange information which I’ll review. So, between a mother discussing her son’s PTSD from experiencing violence while living in Blackistan and the anger about a non-black woman claiming to share the same experiences as non-mixed black women on a hair site frequented by black women as well as the passing of an R&B legend, it’s been an emotional few days for some people.
Isn’t it ironic that Kenyan actress Lupita Nyong’o has a video on HAIR BRAIDING in Vogue (celebrating blackness as normal), while some African American women are stunned to discover they were inadvertently supporting blackface fronts for white interests?
It didn’t take me that long to figure out one major hair blog was in fact, white-owned. I googled her name, an early hair forum of the parent company popped up in the results and it was rather plainly laid out. While I do have great research skills (lol), I actually thought this was common knowledge.
By the way, watching too many of the YT vlogs will drive you insane. Given most of these sites don’t have my hair texture and results vary, I’m glad I didn’t start viewing them until after I completed my own learning process. I have three different textures on one head. And even looking at videos of 4C vlogs my hair doesn’t quite look the same. I think there is an obsessive fascination with “curls” and hair length status updates, but realize if someone is trying to make money from their vlogs, they’re going to push more complicated hairstyles and tons of products. And at least one vlogger has publicly discussed the texture hypocrisy.
The problem of course is that many black women were already coming from a lesser-than point of view and you see how easy it is to gravitate towards women whose skin tone or hair texture are viewed as more desirable thanks to our anti-black woman devastation, that making stars out of them is very similar to how other women (often lighter toned, biracial, etc) are lifted up. You can’t just be relaxer-free, your hair must behave and look certain way!
*And by the way I figured out that most of the problems I’d attributed to relaxed hair (dryness, breakage, fragility) is MY HAIR and has nothing to do with a relaxer.
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Go figure.
The.
End.
But I will pop back in to say thank goodness I skipped following all of the hair blogs and YouTube ‘Gurus’. I may have missed all of the back-stabbing drama from a few years ago but I’m finding the public dragging of the DIRT people do being exposed rather enlightening. In fact, some of it reads JUST like the stuff that some fake-BWE infiltrators tried to pull. So, the latest outrage over a white woman trying to dominate a conversation on what is in fact a white-owned hair blog that black women put on the map would not have been a surprise had people been paying attention to what was going on the entire time. Which includes who they flocked to for reasons other than haircare tips.
**P.S. I did catch a black woman blogger known for her weight loss, clean eating and fitness blog who rocks an old skool AFRO mention on her Twitter feed last week the number of dirty looks she gets from other ‘Naturals’ on the regular.
Anyway…..
Here’s the full history of the shenanigans at the Curly Nikki blog if you’d like to catch up (yes, I’m linking to LSA and yes, no stone has been left unturned):
http://www.lipstickalley.com/showthread.php?t=341298
http://www.lipstickalley.com/showthread.php?t=722847
and apparently there’s some current Plantation behavior over at BGLH, too:
http://www.lipstickalley.com/showthread.php?t=725167
