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Shadowhunters’ Emeraude Toubia’s Catastrophic Case of Cultural Appropriation

Emeraude Toubia is an American actress and model who currently plays the role of Isabelle Lightwood in Freeform’s series Shadowhunters. Recently, the emerging star tweeted a picture of herself on vacation that sparked a lot of controversy.



Many fans called Toubia out for cultural appropriation and even gave her an explanation as to why her photo is so problematic. However, instead of taking the opportunity to apologize for her ignorance, she took the opportunity to tweet another picture of herself with the same braids.



As expected, this added an immense fuel to the fire. One fan took the time to send Toubia a direct message on Twitter with high hopes that she would acknowledge the problem. Unfortunately, things didn’t go as planned and Toubia ended up blocking the fan.



As if it couldn’t get any worse, Toubia attempted to justify herself in the worst way. She retweeted a fan who compared Toubia’s braids with those worn by Christina Aguilera, Jennifer Lopez, and Shakira. In addition, she also tweeted a quote about the origin of braids that she most likely dug up in a five minute Google search. To put the icing on this disastrous cake, she went and tweeted a throwback photo of her as a young girl and captioned it “#tbt mom braiding my hair since 1993”.



Evidently, Toubia failed to recognize her ignorance.

Although it may be true that Toubia was on vacation and getting braided hairstyles is common, it does not justify her actions. There are several other ways you can show the world that you were on vacation, I mean that’s why white folks get those braids anyways, right? The bottom line is that there’s no justification for appropriating a culture.


“The bottom line is that there’s no justification for appropriating a culture.”


Even though many Twitter users approached her in a polite manner and tried to educate her on the situation, she chose to be obnoxious about it. At the end of the day, Toubia should’ve recognized that what she has done was wrong and apologized.

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