Allure on how to get the Rachel Dolezal look

[BainsBane]

Last edited Mon Aug 3, 2015, 10:28 PM - Edit history (1)

Because the number one take away from that news story was, hey, why don't the rest of us white women try it?

Allure magazine has rightfully been dragged through the mud over the past few days for a hair tutorial in their August issue called, “You (Yes, You) Can Have An Afro,” which instructs white women on how to achieve an “Afro.” Unfortunately for Allure, the tutorial doesn’t begin and end with, “be black.”

That sound you hear is the heavy, deeply exasperated sigh from black women around the world who are sick of this garbage behavior from white people. Because Allure was stupid enough to publish the tutorial in the first place, it is unsurprising that they’re stupid enough to now double down on it in a statement to BuzzFeed. Whiteness is intoxicating.

“The Afro has a rich cultural and aesthetic history. In this story, we show women using different hairstyles as an individual expressions [sic] of style. Using beauty and hair as a form of self-expression is a mirror of what’s happening in our country today. The creativity is limitless—and pretty wonderful.”

Hey, Allure, fuck off with your idiotic, sanctimonious bullshit. The blatant cultural appropriation is one thing, but the deep ignorance of these clowns is equally offensive. White people cannot have afros. Period. Full stop. Again, if you are not black, it is not possible that the hair on your head can logically be called an afro, no matter how it’s styled.

http://jezebel.com/allure-stupidly-defends-their-stupid-afro-tutorial-for-1721865867

[Spazito]

1. Wow, both the Allure article and their response are insulting and completely tone deaf...

Geez.

[JustAnotherGen]

2. I saw this through another venue

And again - no words. Except - I believe in being oneself.

[Starry Messenger]

3. w. t. f.

I have lots of words, but don't even know where to start.

[BainsBane]

4. Imagine the planning meeting for that spread

They sit around the table and discuss these things. No one said, "hey, probably not going to come off well"? Makes you wonder who works at the magazine.

[Starry Messenger]

5. It was probably a lot like the comments on the picture up there.

"Oh, what a fun look!"

This is why ethnic studies programs are crucial, starting in early grades. Also, more diversity in hiring in journalism.

Fashion is one of those things where people work very hard to keep a wall of "value-free" gaze stripped off context, and want it completely unexamined.

Lots of people think fashion and beauty are frivolous and serious people shouldn't pay attention to it, even when it is problematic. But it really needs vigorous critique.

Young people are exposed to it early--I was reading Vogue in 7th grade and you do start comparing yourself.

Amandla Stenberg (Hunger Games) has been calling this out, and she makes the point better than I can: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/14/amandla-stenberg-cultural_n_7064420.html

“What would America be like if we loved black people as much as we love black culture?”

“Appropriation occurs when a style leads to racist generalizations or stereotypes where it originated but is deemed as high-fashion, cool or funny when the privileged take it for themselves,” Stenberg explains in her video, appropriately titled “Don’t Cash Crop My Cornrows.”

“Hip hop stems from a black struggle, it stems from jazz and blues, styles of music African-Americans created to retain humanity in the face of adversity,” Stenberg said. “On a smaller scale but in a similar vein, braids and cornrows are not merely stylistic. They’re necessary to keep black hair neat.”

[Number23]

7. Amandla Stenberg is cooler and smarter at 16 than most people will be in their ENTIRE LIVES

That girl is like the daughter I and the entire rest of the world wants.

She has been KILLING the conversations about cultural appropriation lately and she's gotten alot of hate for her efforts in the process.

“What would America be like if we loved black people as much as we love black culture?”

Question that black people have been asking since FOREVER.

[Starry Messenger]

8. She's amazing.

I got to see her on a panel at a comic book event in SF on MLK day. I wish I'd had half her brains at 16!

[Number23]

6. Afros, full lips, round asses are all beautiful.

As long as they're only on white women, you know.

[Heather MC]

9. "From the 70's"?????? I rock a fro every day, because That's my hair.