It’s tiring to see people systematically degrade someone else’s culture just to use it as their own accessory. Yes, I’m talking to the thousands of white people who will call us ghetto, call us ‘ratchet’ and then wear our hairstyles and butcher our dance moves the next day. Cultural appropriation is a vicious trend that spreads like wildfire, it takes one white person to catch the public’s eye by doing the whip or wearing box braids before the whole world perceives that it’s okay to pick and choose and take whatever they wish from anyone’s culture. There’s a fragile balance between cultural appropriation and appreciation and I get that ignorance and lack of education can lead to the mixing of the two, but at this point, I don’t think that you guys are even trying anymore.
Unfortunately, fashion is not immune to this appropriation. It’s a well-known fact that the ‘high fashion’ that we hold so close to our hearts has a tendency to use Black culture as an accessory. Recently, well-known designer Marc Jacobs decided that it was a brilliant idea to send white models out on the runway with fake dreadlocks. Instead of investing in Black models with actual authentic locks, somehow it makes more sense to just steal certain aspects of an entire culture and mold them to your choosing. How hard would it have been to just find a Black model with dreadlocks? To appreciate the beauty of the hairstyle by appreciating the Black women from which they actually grow from? I promise that the world will not end if a high-end fashion brand uses a whole set of Black models for merely one showing.
Acts like these further fuel blatant racism in the ever-so-elite fashion society. You criticize us for our body type, for the way our hair grows from our roots, for the very way in which we were born. Yet, you suddenly decide that you are worthy enough to wear the hair in which we are ridiculed daily for, the reason why some are denied jobs, why some were pushed to the comfort of chemical solace. Black hair is an extremely big part of our community, it’s an art form, something that deserves much more appreciation than it receives. Black hair is also not something that you can steal and claim as a new trendy invention. Especially something as sacred as dreadlocks, which not only hold a long history but various stereotypes that were established by the same people who turn around and steal it. Locks hold the stigma of being related with ‘thugs’ and ‘druggies’. When someone like Zendaya Coleman, as snug as she is in the public’s heart, rocked dreads she still received harsh criticism . The double standard between Black people flaunting our culture and being called ‘ratchet’ and non-Black people doing the same and being called ‘unique’ and ‘open-minded’ is simply not fair. It represents years of oppression and the harsh pattern of repeatedly stealing what is not yours.
It’s really not that hard- if you suddenly feel ‘inspired’ by our culture then try using a model that is actually a part of said culture and stop trying to make white models the ideal standard for aesthetic. You call it isnspiration, we call it appropriation, it’s time to wake up and realize that the days of stealing from entire cultures and expecting silence and compliance are long over.
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