Appropriating The Afro
The publication launched a magnificence story instructing their readers on easy methods to put on a cloud bob in September of 2025. Pictures of afros accompanied the story. One was a superbly symmetrical Afro. The phrase afro doesn’t seem within the story. Its well-documented legacy doesn’t seem within the story. The influence of Tracee’s mother, the legendary Diana Ross, rocking an afro, as a glamour lady, doesn’t seem within the story.
As a substitute, the “cloud bob” is defined like it’s one thing new.
Afros don’t should be redefined in any respect. They’re cemented in our visible identification the way in which french rolls, rope twists, microbraids, and prime knots are. There isn’t any have to invent what exists. You’ll be able to consult with it or reimagine it, however you can’t create the concrete from scratch. It’s already there, whether or not you resolve it’s vital to take a look at it throughout that season or not.
Angela Basset, Colin Kaepernick, Jenifer Lewis, Tabitha Brown, Yaya DaCosta, Solange Knowles and extra have rocked afros, not “cloud bobs.” They’re aside of Black tradition, and that it will be significant.
Anna, and her bob, is perhaps claiming to take a backseat from working the publication, however that hasn’t stopped the colonial vitality from thriving. Not each model piece needs to be a drawn-out historical past lesson, however there’s a grey space in between wholeheartedly embracing a legacy and utterly ignoring its contributions. A sentence or two may set the document straight in these conditions.
Larger Than Temporary Backlash
This isn’t the primary time the model was pressured to apologize for cultural appropriation and tone deaf campaigns. There was the time the fro-inspired photographs of Kendall Jenner that they claimed to characterize the Gibson lady in 2018. They decentered plus-size our bodies from a video they produced impressed by Hair Spray. Folks have referred to as them out about culturally insensitive photoshoots for years. This isn’t a blip. It’s in-built.
There’s strain on all magnificence writers to establish rising developments. It doesn’t excuse the insensitivity of this magnitude. You’ll be able to acknowledge a development with out appropriating the custom that birthed it. Language issues. It’s used to dismiss and erase folks.
This may be accomplished unintentionally, making the necessity for care with phrases much more vital at a spot like Vogue.
The Burden Of Status
Sure cultural establishments change into the defining voice of our society, and that’s why we now have to carry them accountable. It’s straightforward to dismiss issues like this as rage bait, however these phrases linger and overshadow different voices.
Folks belief Vogue; they consider in Vogue. What they are saying will probably be what most individuals settle for as reality. That is notably harmful in a world the place AI summaries have changed folks doing precise analysis. LLMs are scraping data from locations that they contemplate authorities and presenting that to impressionable folks because the definitive reality. That reality gained’t embrace us if folks proceed to switch our magnificence staples with titles that they contemplate extra palatable for them.
This is the reason who’s telling the story issues simply as a lot while you’re speaking about edge management and bundles as while you’re speaking about voter disenfranchisement and reproductive justice. Dwelling historical past grows from our scalps, simply as it’s recorded in newspapers and textbooks.
If the “cloud bob” falls within the algorithm of a Vogue reader, consider me, it makes a sound.
Shifting Backwards
Teen Vogue being gutted makes this misstep really feel even ickier. There should be hardworking, culturally competent folks in that constructing, however you wouldn’t comprehend it by the insensitive content material that they’re churning out. The guardrails they labored so exhausting to ease up as a tradition are being slammed to bits.
It’s open season on Black girls, as soon as once more.
The absence of voices that mirror us results in the rebranding of bonnets and flexirods by these not conditioned to see our experiences. That is how magazines can get away with calling cornrows “boxer braids.” It’s how the slick again buns and hoop earrings which have been noticed on the streets of the Bronx and Spanish Harlem perpetually get rebranded as Midwestern coded indicators of the “clear magnificence aesthetic.”
Repetition of misinformation makes erasure easier for individuals who can’t be bothered to keep in mind that their perspective isn’t the one one which exists. You don’t have to fret about appropriation in case your personalized search agent assures you that there was by no means something there so that you can acceptable from.
The Satan Wears Prada 2 plot may need strayed away from the e-book to level out the small progress being made in Vogue and the few different glossies left, but when the “cloud bob” is any indication, it’s not sufficient to let up.
As a result of it seems to be like if it’s left as much as them our historical past will probably be written, one microtrend at a time.
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