I carried so much hurt and pain around in my little body growing up and in some ways I’m only just learning how to talk about it. From the time I can remember, I was being sent messages about race that I didn’t even fully know how to decode or understand. Some of these messages though were too loud and clear to misinterpret.
One memory stands out particularly vividly. I was in the fourth grade. I was spending time outside the school with some older peers waiting to head home. I remember one peer putting her hands in my hair and saying, “it’s like pubic hair” over and over again. Another placed her hands in my hair, chiming in, “Yeah, it is! It feels like pubic hair!” I was very uncomfortable with the interaction and I didn’t know why or what to do. I didn’t even know what “pubic hair” meant. I walked away as soon as I could. When I later learned what pubic hair was, I felt ashamed and betrayed. The message I heard loud and clear that day was my hair was ugly. It was like the kind of hair you cover or pay good money to remove. I believed the lie of this message for a very long time.
So what does my story have to do with Ivy Park? For those who struggle to stay on top of celebrity news or current events, Ivy Park is a clothing line owned and operated by Beyoncé in collaboration with Adidas. While I’ll likely never be able to afford anything from the line, even if I could, I probably wouldn’t be able to get my hands on it, since everything sells out within moments of new collections being dropped. Four days ago, on Ivy Park’s official Instagram page, a picture was posted which featured two white, Russian women decked out in clothes from the line. Now without anymore explanation, there would be nothing problematic about this. However, these women are in the modern day equivalent of blackface. Whether through tricks of the camera or with the help of makeup, both of these women appear significantly darker than in their usual photos featured on their Instagram accounts. Wearing weaves or wigs, their hairstyles are anything but natural as they sport braids and curls clearly meant to emulate Black hair and fashion. While this in and of itself is problematic, what’s worse is the photo is quickly becoming one of the most liked of the account, but there’s an odd discovery in the comments that gives a hint as to why. The phot is filled with comments of white women minimizing and mocking the concerns of Black women. Many of these comments are in Russian, and while I can’t read Russian, I have a hard time believing they are any nicer than the comments written in English. Despite pleas from the Black community, Ivy Park (and Beyoncé by association) don’t seem to think the post is problematic enough to take it down.
So for Ivy Park, apparently hundreds of Russian women, and all the rest of you who still aren’t sold on why cultural appropriation needs to stop, I’d like to lay out a few reasons for you…
Black women (and actually a lot of people of color, but I digress) are told over and over in a million different ways that we are not beautiful. If you know a Black woman, then you likely know someone who’s been told that they’re pretty “for a Black girl,” whose had their hair touched by a stranger without giving permission, whose been made to feel less than because of her skin tone, or whose had her voice, dress, or demeanor policed and regulated in the guise of “professionalism.” We haven’t seen ourselves reflected in the media, we weren’t able to easily make our way to the store and find a broad array of dolls that looked like us, and we certainly weren’t being called beautiful by anyone outside our community without disclaimers. Beyond that, let’s look at history (more recent than we care to admit, I might add)… minstrel shows, blackface, and artwork that purposely accentuated physical features in mockery, all serve as painful reminders that whiteness was the standard of beauty in America and unless we were white, we were never going to attain it.
Some claim we are entering a new era. I want to believe it, but I’m not sold. While movies like Black Panther or Crazy Rich Asians are showing you can make money, not by centering whiteness, but instead by telling a variety of stories and bringing about wider representation, we are still running into barriers. Ivy Park’s blunder shows that despite our self-proclaimed “progress,” the same woman who creates a musical film called Black is King, has no problem with her clothing line centering whiteness and proving you can still get more likes as a white woman feigning Blackness with makeup and a wig than ACTUALLY BEING A BLACK WOMAN!
When is enough going to be enough? When will you finally own your privilege, acknowledge your greed, and give back what isn’t yours? You don’t get to cosmetically change your lips, hips, hair texture, or skin color without consequences because “it’s cool” when you are the exact same women who mocked Black women’s beauty. You can’t act as if you don’t understand why I’m offended you want to put on my hair as a costume, when you are the exact same women who stood by as a friend of yours put their hands in a young girl’s hair and said, “yeah, it is like pubic hair!” Cultural appropriation isn’t a compliment. It’s one more way for you to steal and plunder, then capitalize on it on what wasn’t yours in the first place. What’s worse is now you want to look around and say to those you’ve stolen from “don’t be so sensitive!”
I could say so much more. I could talk about how I was born into beautiful Blackness, but I’ve had my racial authenticity questioned by white and Black people alike, how at times people have tried to strip from me the very same attributes they just finished mocking, how people have tried to tell me who I am and what I am and what I should and shouldn’t wear over and over until I was so confused I didn’t know up from down. I could tell you how I’ve healed despite ignorance and foolishness. But really, all I have left to say is this: Blackness is not a fad, it’s not a costume. It’s an identity and you don’t get to put it on and off as you please. It’s not yours and you didn’t earn it. Ivy Park (and Beyoncé) you need to do better. Don’t let your clothes be another source of pain and your social media account be another place that pain is minimized.
Caught in the Quarter Life 