STOP 👏 TOUCHING 👏 HAIR 👏 WITHOUT 👏 PERMISSION 👏
If a stranger came up to you and stroked your hair without your consent, you’d be annoyed, right? Put out? Angry, perhaps.
What if you did an interview with a high-profile magazine, in which you discuss the importance of celebrating your hair, with an accompanying photo in which your hair forms a halo around your head, only for that halo to be Photoshopped out?
That’s exactly what happened to Solange last October. The singer-songwriter fell victim to the evils of digital photo enhancements when the Evening Standard magazine, which claimed it edited out the hard work of hairstylists Vernon François and Joanne Petit-Frere to make room for layout. A fair excuse, but really, considering Solange has even written a song titled Don’t Touch My Hair. Seriously, how much more of a hint do you need??
Besides, the excuse isn’t even a good one. In around 5 minutes, I managed to re-create the ES front cover (below) with the original photograph as it was posted on Solange’s Instagram. Yes, a bit of the text gets lost in her armpit (not a sentence I ever thought I’d write), but in Photoshop this would be simple to lighten - the shadow, that is, not her skin tone.
And not even 3 weeks after this debacle, actress Lupita Nyong’o was put through the same nonsense after Grazia erased her loose ponytail and smoothed her hair. In a Tweet and Instagram post, the star said she was “disappointed” that the magazine hader her conform to “a more eurocentric notion of what beauty looks like”.
“Had I been consulted, I would have explained that I cannot support or condone the omission of what is my native heritage with the intention that they appreciate that there is still a very long way to go to combat the unconscious prejudice against black women's complexion, hair style and texture. #dtmh”
Both women captioned their call out posts with #DTMH, but unfortunately some people can’t seem to understand that not only is touching, playing, or messing with Black hair without consent is not just physical harassment, but rooted in racial discrimination; in the 18th century, British colonists in America deemed Black hair to be closer sheep’s wool than ‘human’ (read: white) hair.
To this day, Black hair remains a source of tension due to stereotypes of it being ‘unkempt’ or ‘matted’, which is simply untrue. So unless someone explicitly says you can touch their hair, keep your hands to yourself. They don’t care how fluffy or soft it looks. Don’t. It’s not hard. Children can understand no; adults ought to be able to as well. Young me managed to learn that after my mixed race cousin said she didn’t like me touching her hair regardless of if she was touching mine, so I stopped. Problem solved. Easy.
(Oh, and if you come across someone who doesn’t get the message, show them this game.)
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