“I don’t know what to do with your hair sweetheart,” my mom told me as I showed her a picture of Selena Gomez in Seventeen Magazine. Her hair was straight, shiny and polished and my twelve-year-old self wanted nothing more than to have good hair.
“Your hair is not like her’s, girl. You’re just gonna have to get used to it,” my mother said, going back to the dishes and ending the conversation.
A couple of weeks later, I got my hair relaxed for the first time.
This is a story that many women and young girls know all too well.
Western culture has placed Anglo-Saxon features at the forefront of beauty and it became the foundation as to what it means to be beautiful. For many years, society has been laying the groundwork on how to be a beautiful and successful woman in society, but African American features are nowhere to be found.
The “whitewashing” of the media is not a practice that recently started. Many magazines and publications like Vogue and Cosmopolitan, have been using white women in their beauty “how-to” sections a vast majority of the time, leaving many minority women out of the beauty conversation.
While the new term for “white-washing” has yet to debut in Webster’s dictionary, the term has been used a lot when it comes to cultural topics. One of the areas of discussion is the effect it has on minority women. In an article posted by the blog Race and Technology, one of the most common known effect is low self-esteem, but another effect that rises from this issue is colorism. Colorism is the practice of discrimination based on someone’s skin tone within a racial group. It is believed that African American women who fit within the Eurocentric ideals (lighter skin tone, naturally colored eyes etc.) are more likely to be accepted into mainstream culture than African American women who are darker.
The article goes on to say that the process of whitewashing doesn’t only mean to flood all forms of media with white faces. It also means taking African American women and digitally assimilating them so they can fit perfectly into the already constant format.
Examples like these are easy to find in Hollywood and print and digital advertisements. Most African American women in movies and shows possess some of the features that meet Eurocentric ideals such as lighter skin and sleek straight hair. While many advertisements have been using the mighty power of Photoshop to lighten the celebrity’s skin tone like for Kerry Washington and Mindy Kaling.
Junior and mass communication major, Cynthea Corfah, is well aware of whitewashing and how it impacts minority women. “It’s sad how African-American women haven’t been praised for their kinks and curls,” she said. “Our hair type, facial features, and body shapes are what make us so uniquely beautiful. I think with enough ‘rebellion’ against conforming to white beauty standards, those standards will change.”
While African American women have to change their looks and strip away a bit of their identity to fit in, many Caucasian women are taking African American beauty looks to seem more “edgy” and fashion forward.
The saturated use of white washing transforms into another controversial topic: cultural appropriation. Cultural appropriation is the sociological notion that interprets that the adoption of certain elements from a culture as a negative act.
The practice of cultural appropriation has been at the forefront of many entertainment and fashion blogs who post pictures and editorials of celebrities and models who, in return, receive praise for these looks. Minority women, however, remain trapped and ridiculed from the stereotypes that surround these trends. Many examples still float around the world wide web today.
Sophomore and mass communication major, Kia Sims, expresses her views on the heated topic. “It’s not necessarily the “white-washing” that I have an issue with, its mostly the cultural appropriation,” she stated. “I think people should be able to wear their hair however they wish and not be judged for it.  The issue comes into place when a black woman is looked at as “ghetto” or “manly” when she wears cornrows, but it is considered high fashion if a white model wears it down the runway.  It’s a double standard in the beauty industry and something has got to change.”
During the summer, Hollywood socialite and reality star, Kylie Jenner, posted a photo on her Instagram wearing cornrows. Soon after, commenters across all platforms started bashing the star for appropriating black culture, sparking an all out debate on the Internet. What fueled the fire even further was when Hunger Games star Amandla Sternberg criticized Jenner for using the trends of African American women for her own gain.
Jenner never apologized for the post and never took the picture down. However, Sternberg created her own response by posting a photo on her Instagram that explains the reason why the appropriation of African American culture is damaging to society as a whole. The post explained society makes the features of black women beautiful but not the women themselves. That the euro-centric fascination with Western culture makes it acceptable for white women to plump their lips and get tans and big butts, while African American women are hounded for naturally possessing these features.
The criticism of African American women and the styling of their hair have been exposed over the broadcast waves. In late February, E!’s hit show, Fashion Police was hosting their Academy Awards special, spending an hour critiquing and mocking various celebrities and their looks under the guise of good fun.
Things took a turn for the worse when Zendaya Coleman’s look was placed on the chopping block, leading to E! News anchor, Guiliana Rancic, to question Coleman’s reasoning for going on the carpet wearing dreadlocks. After a few seconds of petulant banter, Rancic commented on how the hairdo made Coleman seemed like she smelled of patchouli oil and weed. The Internet exploded with anger, forcing one of the hosts, Kelly Osbourne, to leave the show and Rancic issuing a heartfelt apology.
The scandal provided a first hand of look at the reactions African American women face on a daily basis when it comes to their hair.
Sadly, this isn’t only the recent example on the sensitive topic. For Allure Magazine’s August issue, controversy ensued when a beauty article giving hair tutorials used a white woman wearing an Afro along with a tutorial. Many readers and nonreaders alike were furious with the fact that an African American woman wasn’t used instead. Allure has since apologized for the article, but the overall topic has not simmered.
The aftermath of whitewashing can lead to practices and beauty regimens that would help the minority woman be accepted into mainstream society through the process of assimilation. A couple of the most common practices for African American women is relaxing their hair or getting a weave. However some people speculate on whether it is because of the media’s influence or for themselves.
Kia Sims expressed that it is a little bit of both for her. “I chose to relax my hair my senior year of high school,” she said. “This was mostly because I wanted my hair to be more manageable to do on my own and straighten it. I’ve always worn my hair straight and that’s the way I like it.”
However, she does go on to confess that the media had a little bit of a part in her decision. “That’s mostly because I always looked in magazines or on TV and all the women I saw had straight hair, so that’s how I wanted mine.”
The processes and upkeep for the sake of “good hair” is not easy. First off, going to a salon for a relaxer is not cheap. Of course there a lot of factors that determine the price like hair type, type of relaxer and salon but the average is around fifty to a hundred dollars.
Besides the pricing, the process itself is nothing short of pleasant. In Chris Rock’s critically acclaimed documentary “Good Hair,” Rock takes it upon himself to explore the mysterious culture of hair processing on African American women. In the film, many women refer to the relaxer as “creamy crack” for it’s miraculous but damaging effects it has on women’s hair. Also, once a woman starts relaxing her hair she has to keep doing it until she decides to go natural.
The unpleasantness also stems from the fact that the relaxer can burn the woman’s scalp and cause acne and scarring along the top edges of the forehead, let alone a strong odor. After the hair is relaxed, shedding is a common occurrence.
Several years ago, some relaxers were found to contain the deadly chemical sodium hydroxide or lye, and some chemicals are similar to those found in drain cleaners. Though the FDA has tackled this issue, it still goes to show the lengths many African American women will travel to have “good hair.”
Many women resort to getting wigs or weaves for their hair. Wigs are whole pieces of hair which cover the woman’s original hair type. Weaves are often sewn into braids to achieve a certain look. Not all weaves, however, are straight and long. Weaves come in many styles and colors and vary in terms of style and expression.
However, not all African American women are using relaxers or weaves. Many women are deciding to go natural. Maintaining someone’s natural hair is very complicated and requires a lot of upkeep, but many women still see it as a better alternative than relaxing.
Cynthea Corfah has made the decision to go natural. “I no longer choose to relax my hair,” she said. “I made the decision to stop relaxing my hair my freshmen year of college. For years, I wondered why my hair wouldn’t grow and why I was having such severe damage. I started doing research on the ‘Natural Hair Movement’ and I only saw good results. It was then that I stopped relaxing my hair.”
So far, Corfah has no regrets. “I love it. It comes with it’s own challenges though,” she declares. “Such as: learning the different hair styles, ways of protection, how frequently you need to get trims, etc. But being natural has definitely given me a newfound appreciation for this beautiful texture I have growing out of my head.”
It’s nice to see African American women in entertainment flaunt their natural locks. A perfect example of this will be Academy Award winner Lupita Nyong’o and singer Solange Knowles who have been gracing the red carpet with their natural styles. Many African American celebrities like Zendaya Coleman, Taraji P. Henson and Gabrielle Union have taken to Instagram to post pictures of their natural hair to help many younger African American women to love their natural hair.
As Corfah stated, going natural is also a political movement. Many African American women choose to go natural to rebel against a society that tells them their curls are not beautiful. They decide to stay away from any chemicals and weaves because they want to show off the hair they were born with.
African American hair is a difficult topic. It’s natural for some people to walk on eggshells when it is introduced. However, the issue should not be ignored. The standards of beauty minority women face is a problem that should not only be discussed online. It deserves a lot of face time as well. If people were able to thoroughly discuss this topic and the effects behind it, maybe there would be more respect and tolerance of African American beauty.
As a society, we need to realize whitewashing is not a myth or conspiracy theory, but a real form of oppression which exists on the pages of magazines and the screens of televisions. To move forward on race relations, we must realize how influential the social construct of race is in our society and how much praise the Eurocentric ideals receive in order to keep minority women inferior.
These harmful constructs must be recognized and challenged with the intention of replacing it to expand the definition of beauty and celebrate all women.