September is the biggest month in and for the fashion industry. It starts with the glossy covers of elite fashion magazines in early August and ends with the polaroids from the ultra-exclusive Paris after-parties on Instagram.
Each fall, we see the industry's top editors, influencers, and models crammed next to each other, holding their breath while the newest trend makes its debut on the catwalk. Beautiful, handcrafted pieces that cascade down the runway flowing off of elegant, beautiful women whom society has deemed worthy enough to walk. Coveted photos of front rows and sidewalks flood online spaces for the no-goers to obsess over and share.
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Year after year though, there's something missing.
I grew up fascinated by the lamented pages of fashion magazines. It was the only reason I would agree to run to the grocery with mom. Often times, she would let me grab one or two magazines from the register aisle when we checked out. In a matter of minutes, those magazines would be sprawled across my floor with tattered edges and fat red circles. I poured over the writing of Hamish Bowles, Grace Coddington, and other esteemed writers. Each story fascinated me more with how much fashion weaved into the lives of politicians, activists, and even every day people, like me. There was a sense of otherworldliness that kept my green eyes glued.
It wasn't until I had a firm understanding of what I looked like, that I stopped loving fashion.
Sure, I knew how to catwalk in heels and make my legs look long, even in flats. I still coveted the exquisite editorials, draped in a mirage of literary themes starring my favorite people. I still loved all of it. But, it was clear that fashion didn't love me. It never really had. If they did, wouldn't I see more artists and models that look like me?
Where are the women in my church, whose perfectly fitted hats complimented every aspect of their Sunday dress each and every week? Where was my mom, with her dresser lined with expensive perfumes and her closet stacked with her coveted shoes? Where was I, with my curly hair and oversized pants?
Nowhere, that's where.
Not on the catwalks, not on TV, and definitely not in my favorite magazines.
It's an interesting feeling when you love something that can't love you back.
It's dehumanizing and sad. It fills your heart with loneliness and doubt. Unrequited love isn't all the poets make it out to be. It creates a pit in your soul and starts an unhealthy cycle of resentment and love that only ends in hatred towards yourself, more than anything else. What was once my solace and comfort vanished in a matter of months.
Fashion turned even more narrow by only highlighting teeny boppers and the new-in celebs while sacrificing the style icons and tastemakers portrayed in former years.
The biggest topics of #NYFW: two black women. The most talked about designers debuting: black designers. The most talked about September covers: two black women. The stunners who shut down Paris fashion week: black women. Yet, when I look at all the glamorous models on the runway or the IT girls who occupy the front rows, I see little to no black women. Almost none, to be exact.
It continuously baffles me that black women, and other ethnicities for that matter, are constantly left out of the public side of an industry where we influence so much.
It's not enough to have black women on the covers, we need them in the boardroom. It's not enough to have black models, we need black photographers, editors, and creative directors. It's not enough to have black Editor-At-Large but an actual Editor-In-Chief.
It's not enough.
We need more. We need better.
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Featured photo by Courtney Simpson
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THE ITGIRL MEMO
I. An ItGirl puts on for her city and masters her self-worth through purpose.
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Today, that movement has turned into a wig uprising where Black women are able to experiment with colors, styles, and more without causing irreparable damage to our hair. It could even be said that we’ve arrived at a new level of acceptance: one that does not equate love of oneself to one’s willingness or lack thereof to wear her hair the way others deem acceptable. Not even other people who look like us.
However, as with Blackness itself, the issue of Black women’s hair is layered.
On the surface, it’s nothing more than a matter of personal preference. However, in a deeper dive, issues of texture, curl pattern, and of course, proximity to social acceptance, as well as other runoff streams from the waters of racism and patriarchy, rear their heads. The natural hair movement, though a wide-reaching and liberating community builder, also gave way to colorism and often upheld mainstream beauty standards.
Sometimes, favoring lighter-skinned influencers/creators with very specific hair textures, the white gaze leaked into our safe space and forced us to reckon with it. Accurate representations of natural hair in various states of being—undefined curls, kinks, and unlaid edges—are still absent from brand marketing. Protective styles, though intended to provide breaks from styling for our sensitive hair, have become a mask to help our hair be more palatable. A figurative straddle of the fence in order to appease the comfort of others in the face of our hair’s power.
And then there’s the issue of length.
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As a woman who has spent much of the last decade voluntarily wearing her hair in many variations of short hairstyles, from a pixie cut to a curly fro and a sleek bob, what I’ve gleaned throughout the years is that there is a glaring difference between how I am treated when wearing my hair short than when I opt for weaves, extensions or even grow it out slightly longer than my chin.
The differential treatment comes from women and men alike and spans professional and personal settings, including friends, coworkers, and industry peers.
What has become abundantly clear is that long hair is often conflated with beauty, softness, and any number of other words we relate to femininity in a way that short hair is not. That perceived marker of the essence of womanhood shows up in how I am received, communicated with, and complimented.
Even more so than texture, length has a way of deciding who among us is deserving of our attention, affection, and adoration. Whether naturally grown or proudly bought, the commentary around someone’s look or image greatly shifts when “inches” are present.
When it comes to long hair, we really, really do care.
In an effort to understand whether I had simply been misinterpreting the energy around my hair, I decided to take my findings to social media. I began with two side-by-side photos of myself. In both pictures, my hair is straightened; however, in one, I am wearing my signature pixie cut, and in the other, I am wearing extensions.
I posited that treatment based on hair length is a real thing, and what followed was confirmation that I was not alone in my feelings. “Long hair, like light skin, button noses, and being thin are all forms of social capital,” one user commented. “Some Black women enforce the status quo too, why wouldn’t we?”
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This also brought to mind the many times celebrity women (like most recently Beyoncé's Cécred hair tutorial) have done big reveals of their own natural tresses in an attempt to silence any doubt that Black women are able to grow their hair beyond a certain length. Of course, we all know that to be true, so why do we still feel the need to prove it so?
The responses continued to pour in from women of all skin tones, who felt that hair length played a role in people’s treatment of them. “When I have short hair I always feel like people don’t treat me like a woman, they treat me like a kid,” another user commented. “When my hair is long I get a lot more respect for some reason.”
From revelations about feeling invisible to admitted shifts in their own perceived beauty, Black woman after Black woman poured out her experience as it relates to hair length. Though affirmed by their shared realities, knowing that reactions to something so trivial have become yet another hair battle for Black women to fight was disheartening. Though we continue to defy gravity and push the bounds of imagination and creativity by way of our strands, will it always be in response to the idea that we are, somehow, falling short?
Unlike more obvious instances of hair discrimination, the glorification of longer length is sneakier in its connection to Eurocentric beauty standards. Hair commercials, beauty ads, and even hip-hop music have long celebrated the idea of gloriously long tresses while holding onto the ignorant notion that it is inaccessible for Black women.
Even as we continue to fight to prove our hair professional, elegant, and worthy in its natural state to the world at large, we’ve also adopted harmful value markers of our own as a community. It’s evident in how we talk about who has the right to start a haircare line and which influencers we easily platform. It’s evident in the language we use to identify those with long hair versus short hair. And it’s painfully obvious in how we treat one another.
It makes me wonder if India.Arie’s brave rallying cry, almost two decades old in its existence, will ever actually hold true for us. Or will we just continue to invent new ways to uphold the harmful status quo?
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Feature image by Willie B. Thomas/ Getty Images
