Cultural misappropriation and hair

[meandthem]

Am I being unreasonable to object to ethnicity being a factor in respect of what hairstyle choices women are "allowed"? I am pissed of that it now seems acceptable for some styles to be considered cultural misappropriation. What happened to the sisterhood and feminism and women's right to do what the hell we want with our hair!

I guess I think - yes! You can do what the hell you want with your hair/clothes and that's the way it should be.

But maybe consider, if you have been inspired by another culture, letting people know this. Share your love for the other culture, so that people gain appreciation of what you appreciate. That way, hopefully eventually, we won't be looking down on - for example - black women's hairstyle on black women, or bindis on asian women.

As for Imagine you were in a meeting and made a suggestion that was ignored. Five minutes later a colleague makes the same suggestion and everyone loves it. I see your point but that has happened to damn near every woman, regardless of race.

Right. So, if women can understand this then they can understand cultural appropriation and how non-white women feel about hair and clothes.

My brother is mixed race and always feels he has to cut his hair as short as possible for work etc. Can't let it get too big or it would look unprofessional. I suppose the same can be said for white men and long hair.

Generally, tackling sexism and racism, and how we perceive hair and clothing in all cultures can solve all of this.

If a black person straightens their hair isn't that cultural misappropriation?

It's NOT just hair for black people.

I'm a black african woman living in the UK (over a decade now). I have black coily hair. I love my hair. When I straighten my hair;
which I hate to do because it damages my hair, I have to do it to fit in, to get work.

However, I have straightened hair or hair extensions for about 7 months of the year. This is because I work in a different office for about 6 months at different times. When I started working there with my natural hair neatly plaited, a circular went round to remind us 'all' that we are to maintain the dress code including 'professional' hair style. The owners don't quite appreciate the 'ethnic' look. No, I didnt want to get into a political rights debate - I need that job, I need to be able to do what I need to at that location. I've got bills to pay and a PhD to complete.

Oh and I have lost work at a previous contract that involved being sent to present to high networth indvs; - work was very scarce when I had plaited hair. When my hair was long and straight though, my diary was full.

Historically:
Plaits, braids, hair styles in general were (and still is) a means of tribal and cultural identity. A statement of pride. A symbol of belonging amongst other things.
When black people were put in slave ships, their heads were shaved (no, it wasn't for hygiene or the white crew would be shaved too), it was to make them 'all the same' and to dehumanize.
In slavery, if your hair grew and you plaited it As you would if you wanted to protect it for weeks, you would have to put a scarf on to cover it. Black women still do this now.

As they came out of slavery, they did everything to fit into their new culture incl straight permed hair to look like their masters using very harmful chemicals to achieve this as well as wigs and hair extensions. To fit into 'white people' society, we still do these things now.

So when I straighten my hair, it's not because I like it, it's because I have to.

I don't object to other races plaiting their hair though. Its your hair - enjoy it! I might not enjoy what i have to do with my hair, that doesnt mean others shouldn't.

in reference to the american indian comments.the 1/16th bloodline is more for access to tribal benefits.the few that there are.everyone wants to be indian here.until they end up on a reservation polluted by radioactive testing,have no water or electricity.
indian braids are a specific thing in some nations.the only time i have have ever seen an elder get upset was when some one wore honor braids(a specific braid on a specific place on the head with spirtual ornaments)he spoke to her about it and she did not change them.he got very upset.plain old braids!??no one cares.and very few nations had warbonnets. every kid in the country wants to be the indian when playing cowboys and indians.we don't take offense.we think its funny.
my niece who is a mix of 3 races is copper colored hair skin eyes.we call her the Ambassador.when someone asks she politally tells them her heritage,she wheres her full curly hair in an afro,she wheres silver jewelry made by her indian aunt.and her white gm makes most of her clothing, thats not levis and tshirts.she will be a magnificent woman soon.

the whole need for blacks to have "good hair" has always saddened me.it has stopped mostly in states.alot of woman are going natural.the men tend to keep it short because they are looked at as radicals(or don't feel like dealing with the work to keep it maintained)bil has a glorious 'fro and couldn't imagine him with anything else.

I agree with Naked Scientist. Women of all heritage are encouraged to groom and tame their hair in the workplace. Unless a woman has cropped hair she can't leave the house without doing something to it.

I'm white, my hair is curly / frizzy depending on weather etc. One day I woke up and thought it looked good, so I barely touched it. When I got to work, my (black) friend said, Charley, aren't you going to comb your hair?
Nearly all women 'do' their hair to an extent. Braids or a neat Afro are perfectly acceptable in the workplace. Race is a protected characteristic in the Equality Act, so if a hairstyle particular to a race is deemed unacceptable that would be a cause for legal action.
Neatness is a different issue.

But, just because the comments were not right, doesn't mean that cultural appropriation doesn't exist

This is true. But I think its also true that a lot of people have misunderstood what CA is and have simplified it down to 'don't have dreads'
Which is a nonsense.
You get a bunch of over privileged college kids who may or not be black harassing a random single teen in the street for having locs.
Its taking the issue and making it into a hobby for people who wouldn't know oppression if it knocked on their door and gave them a leaflet explaining itself.

Pretty much anyone on this thread who is not saying 'Its bollocks!' or 'Its totally a thing and there is no debate' is being ignored.

Just like on trans threads.
Because being Totally, Utterly Right is far more interesting

Braids or a neat Afro are perfectly acceptable in the workplace. Race is a protected characteristic in the Equality Act, so if a hairstyle particular to a race is deemed unacceptable that would be a cause for legal action.

Not my experience. I'm mixed race with curly hair that I can relax and blow dry straight. The problem with chemically relaxing my hair is that it damages my hair but I still feel I have to at times in order to actually get work in the first place. Workplaces have hinted towards "neater" hairstyles when I have come in with natural hair (even though it was actually tidy) - they just preferred my straight hair to my curly hair. Many black and mixed race people don't want to take legal action as it's difficult and stressful. It can cause issues with colleagues and bosses. It can also stop you from progressing in your field. This is aside from the general comments from colleagues.

Maybe it depends where you are located. I don't know if black hairstyles are more acceptable in London workplaces for example, but it's not been my experience.

But I think its also true that a lot of people have misunderstood what CA is and have simplified it down to 'don't have dreads' Which is a nonsense.

Agreed. It's so complicated and mixed in with the general sexism surrounding women's hair and standards.

I think another complexity is that many posters are applyiny a US-centric cultural focus and attempting to apply it, unmodified, to the UK. This fails to appreciate issues specific to the UK, particularly our entrenched class culture which is the system of oppression that ,meant the young Rotherham victims were treated as criminals rather than their adult male abusers. Working class girls do not have power and privilege in UK society which is why they are a cheap and easy target for the middle classes wanting to display their liberal credentials by criticising how young women present themselves. 'Cultural appropriation' is just another handy stick to beat them with.

If I, as a white british woman, want to wear my hair in dreadlocks for whatever reason, I will not justify it to anyone and I will bloody well do as I please, it's hair after all. Who gives a shit

its heart breaking reading that in modern Britain that natural but neat hair is causing issues in the workplace for so many people. I really hope this gradually changes for the better without the need for repeated people being brave enough to take legal action.

Imagine you were in a meeting and made a suggestion that was ignored. Five minutes later a colleague makes the same suggestion and everyone loves it
I think this is a poor analogy. If a black person styles their hair in cornrows etc. it is not something original that they have come up with - the credit belongs to their ancestors. I am not sure if there is a good analogy for cultural appropriation to be honest.

I can see that there are obvious problems with cultural appropriation. Let’s take music for example. It is sad when a white rapper emerges who does better than other equally talented black rappers because they are seen as more commercial/acceptable to a majority white audience. But I don’t think the answer is to say that white people are not allowed to rap as that is going too far. Things like the MOBO awards are a good idea (although realistically what music do people listen to nowadays that doesn’t have black origins?!).

I read an interesting interview with Sean Paul a while ago where he said that he was frustrated with people using Jamaican dancehall rhythms without acknowledging where they came from. His suggestion was that people should give a shout out to Jamaica at the start of these songs. Whilst I can see the merit in this idea, I think it might end up sounding silly in practice.

With regards to hair, I think the best thing to do is educate white people about how black hair naturally looks and that they should respect people’s decisions to wear it however they want. I agree with other posters who have said that there is a general bias against frizzy hair whatever the race of the person, but black people have it much worse. It saddens me when schools have restrictive hair policies, and I recall that there were problems with the US army haircuts a few years ago which basically banned women with Afro hair from having anything other than a style typically worn by people of European descent.

But I don’t have a problem with eg Jesy from Little Mix wearing dreads if she wants to. I also think that it could have the effect of normalising the hairstyle so that more black people are free to wear it without judgement. It is sad that it might take a white woman wanting something to make it OK, but it is what it is.

Book recommendation: ‘Why I’m no longer talking to white people about race’ by Reni Eddo-Lodge

It’s worth a read whichever side of the fence you sit on, re issues like this. The reason she wrote the original article was based on conversations that sound much like this thread!

I definitely do have a problem with Jest from Little Mix wearing dreds - it’s smacks of PR stunt. And black people won’t wear more dreds because she did! We do not need white people ‘normalising’ anything for us thank you! You already did that with your own beauty standards...

Jesy*

Jesy from Little Mix looked lovely in her dreads. So what if it is a PR stunt? It is pretty much the nature of her job to court publicity, But I do find Little Mix raise particular ire in how they dress. I wonder why that is?

LaLaLanded Already read it. Interesting, but I didn’t agree with all of it. I still think the answer is to educate people to be tolerant rather than saying “Your family is originally from X country so you can do this and cannot do that” and “Your family is originally from Y country so you can do that and cannot to this”.

Speedy ditto. Especially as at the end of the day, it's not where you come from (or where your parents came from) that makes the difference in so many cases, its what you look like. Jesy is a good case in point - not black enough/wrong kind of black.

The real issue here is that we are all ruled over by a very privelidged white male elite from 2unis and three schools who have most of the power land and money and they are more than happy that the masses squabble about who is best and who can have what hair.

Cultural appropriation is definitely a thing (the number of white artists/clothing designers etc who have made a fortune out of basically copying some or other indigenous culture's arts without crediting the creators is huge). But there are also issues, as stated upthread, of people using the concept to sneer at teenagers, particularly teenage girls. It's one of the things that shows up a substantial difference between UK and US cultures - it is a lot more likely for teenagers (and quite a lot of people who are now 50+ had similar experiences in their own teens) to mix with other teenagers from different ethnic/cultural backgrounds and to mix and match clothes, hairstyles, music etc because that's what teenagers do.

As with everything else in progressive politics, it's a topic that attracts a percentage of pissy, self-righteous noisy bullies who look for the weakest targets to attack and shame for something they may have done with good intentions. There also comes a point where the racket about 'appropriation' gets worryingly close to supporting segregation (this thing is only for this ethnic group, stay in your own zone and all the rest of it). And there are a lot of people with a mixed heritage, whose appearance doesn't match the 'majority' ethnicity |(the kid with one white grandparent who is very light-skinned, the kid with one black great-grandparent who has inherited a darker skin-tone and 'African' hair...) who are going to get shit from both sides of the debate whatever they do.

I’m old enough not to give a shit about hair styles- mine is just cut short for convenience. But I was raised on the principle that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
It would be a ghastly world if your hairstyle and clothes were dictated by the fashion police, and you were only permitted a limited range deemed “appropriate” for your culture! I wish people would get over themselves and celebrate the “joy in diversity” idea of the Vulcans in Star Trek. We probably all originated in Africa anyway. If you take this cultural appropriation nonsense to its limit, Swiss women will all be forced to wear Heidi outfits, so as not to steal other cultures’ clothes. Where does this crap end? It smacks to me of virtue signalling, and wishing to be politically correct.
Sorry if that sounded a bit of a grumpy rant - it’s just that, as an elderly feminist, I think there are more important battles for women than fighting among ourselves over each other’s bloody hairstyles!

But it isn't about that Badoc. It's the idea that for a hairstyle to be deemed acceptable it has to become mainstream. So in this instance certain hairstyles that have been used for millennia by black women have been considered 'untidy', 'unprofessional' and 'ugly' - but when enough white women co-opt it, it suddenly becomes 'stylish' and acceptable. There is a reason why intersectional feminism exists - if we are going down that road.

As I said upthread Meghan Markle's natural hair looks far different from how it is now, as does Michelle Obama's.

I've experienced this personally - I'm mixed of 3 different races. I have seen this in action. It isn't just a case of 'let women do what they want with their hair'. It doesn't work like that unfortunately.

then respond to my analogy about your colleague getting credit for your idea.

OK, you have an idea to put a ping pong ball on your ariel to allow you to find your car in the car park.

Someone else thinks it's a good idea and does it too, someone else copies them, someone else copies them, someone else starts a business selling them on Ebay.

The same thing happens in France because someone else has the same idea with a ribbon, and in China with a flag.......

Is that cultural appropriation? Or is it just the fact that people have ideas & once those ideas get out into the big wide world other people pick up on them too.

Are you saying that if a culture started something a thousand years ago, they get dibs on it & no-one else anywhere in the world can ever do the same thing?

Because I don't think that's either appropriate, realistic or achievable....

certain hairstyles that have been used for millennia by black women have been considered 'untidy', 'unprofessional' and 'ugly' - but when enough white women co-opt it, it suddenly becomes 'stylish' and acceptable

What is the aim? For all non-black women to wait until black women can have cornrows, afros, locs before anyone else can do so without criticism in a majority non-black society? No revolution is better than a revolution accelerated and facilitated by non-blacks? These are really not meant to be goady questions but I really want - as someone who's never going to appropriate black hairstyles - to understand what the aim is here in calling out non-black women who do this to their hair. I appreciate how galling it is to have to rely on the whims of the oppressor class to facilitate liberation but black women are a significant minority in the UK. It's not like sex, where the class split is 50/50. Until these certain hairstyles do become mainstream, will negative views of these hairstyles ever change?