Well, I think the situation is much more complex than the way that it appears on the surface. Eurocentric beauty standards, which I touched on a bit in my piece but it was not the point of it so I didn’t go into explicit detail, have very real consequences for Women of Color. Fitting into the mold of what is deemed beautiful by larger society directly affects everything from being hired to moving through social interactions more easily, which may seem trivial, but it is frustrating to be in the middle of interactions in which you would like people to take you seriously but all they want to talk about is your hair (or reach into your personal space and grab it). Fitting into more Eurocentric beauty standards has even been shown in psych studies to effect Black women’s prison sentences and the likeliness of people wanting to help you. And that’s messed up, and a part of a whole system that needs to be changed, but I’m not going to demonize the women who are trying to maneuver the system as best as they can.

Toward your second point of if it is still home, I would say absolutely yes. While the beauty industry is extremely flawed, from where and how the hair is sourced and who profits off it, it is undeniable that Black women have REVOLUTIONIZED the hair industry. It may be someone else’s hair but honeyyyyy, it is laid. If you look at hair stylists like Tokyostylez and Anthony Cuts on Instagram/Youtube, very few people can do what they do. Wigs and weaves are once again, an example of creating a whole new art form out of the oppression that has denied us the ability to love our hair in our natural texture. But while that may be the root of it, I also can’t sit here and say that self-hate is the reason for every woman and femme who wears wigs and weaves today because that’s simply not true. (And also people don’t jump to that same conclusion about white women who wear wigs/weaves/extensions.) People wear wigs and weaves for different reasons and I can’t sit here and make a widespread diagnosis on how they feel about themselves or their culture.

You can also struggle to make yourself beautiful and it be your own version of beautiful that is also affected by society. Everything is affected by society. Everyone is affected by society.

So no, it’s not the whole truth, I never claimed it to be. I did claim it to be my truth though, and that it is.