This obsession with black women’s hair isn’t liberating
by dr. Christine Louis-Dit-Sully
Black and anti-racist activists are suddenly deadset on reducing black women to their hairstyles.
Photographer An Le made an excruciating apology to actress Lupita Nyong’o this week after she accused him of erasing her ‘heritage’ by editing out some of her hair in a cover photo for Grazia magazine. Nyong’o said the edit was intended to ‘fit a more Eurocentric notion of what beautiful hair looks like’. In his apology, Le agreed that the photo editing was an ‘unbelievably damaging and hurtful act’.
And so an artistic decision by a photographer has been politicised and presented as an attack on black women. Personally, I think the erasing of part of her hair highlights the incredible beauty of her facial features.
Please, continue reading on this Spiked! page, October 16, 2017.
photo pictures © Aart G. Broek