What’s her point?

[vooke]

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Disappointed that @GraziaUK edited out & smoothed my hair to fit a more Eurocentric notion of what beautiful hair looks like. #dtmh pic.twitter.com/10UUScS7Xo

— Lupita Nyong'o (@Lupita_Nyongo) November 10, 2017

https://instagram.com/p/BbTCfXKDjc8/
As I have made clear so often in the past with every fiber of my being, I embrace my natural heritage and despite having grown up thinking light skin and straight, silky hair were the standards of beauty, I now know that my dark skin and kinky, coily hair are beautiful too. Being featured on the cover of a magazine fulfills me as it is an opportunity to show other dark, kinky-haired people, and particularly our children, that they are beautiful just the way they are. I am disappointed that @graziauk invited me to be on their cover and then edited out and smoothed my hair to fit their notion of what beautiful hair 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

They did ask the photographer to do it, they did not do it,a long way of throwing the photographer under the bus :D

[RV Pundit]

She has a solid point

[Kim Jong-Un's Pajama Pants]

[vooke]

She has a solid point

Her point,to me,ends with whining about the cropping. She has severally and I dare say mostly, spotted short hair,so whatever the magazine depicted was not entirely strange. In fact had she not whined, nobody would have picked anything strange with the photo. She is in her element.

It is her reasons, about Eurocentric   Vs Afrocentric ideals that I found misplaced.

And she had to remind the world that she had societal imposed esteem issues

[Dear Mami]

But choosing to put a flat Asian woman on your cover and then "endowing" her in secret is totally something else. I mean, the magazine didn't have to use Lupita if they thought she didn't represent the beauty standards their audience appreciates.

In an interview I saw Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie state flatly that had Michelle had her natural African do, Obama would never have smelled the inside of the white house. I would have thought that quite the exaggeration a few years ago but I have seen the stark difference in reactions I elicit when I have my thick big Afro do and when it's straight and falling over the shoulders. It's such a difference that it seems totally not worth it to keep the fro. More and more black woman in the West are keeping it natural but they always make it pin straight when they interview for jobs and during the first few probation months. Soon as its over they go wild.

[Kim Jong-Un's Pajama Pants]

But choosing to put a flat Asian woman on your cover and then "endowing" her in secret is totally something else. I mean, the magazine didn't have to use Lupita if they thought she didn't represent the beauty standards their audience appreciates.

Really?  This is how Lupita looks in Brown Shuga.  This is her natural look.  The retouching is actually closer to her natural self.



Which makes the racial angle claim of Eurocentrism even stranger.

[Dear Mami]

I think Lupita's complaint is that they chopped off her long African hair in all its visibly kinky, non-straight glory and even flattened it on top of her head to get rid of the kinky rise. I don't think a woman with straight hair has ever had it all chopped off like that. She wonders if the magazine was uncomfortable showing unrelaxed (non-chemicalized) coily African hair. She's right to complain, IMHO coz they didn't retouch her, they got rid of her hair entirely like it wasn't ok. Also, careful about assuming that short hair is always natural. Women use all kinds of texturizers and such on that kind of short hair quite often. The long hair in the magazine shot is definitely not chemicalized. You can tell from the curls and also how it doesn't lie flat at the top of her head, it's her natural hair, just long.

[Kim Jong-Un's Pajama Pants]

I think Lupita's complaint is that they chopped off her long African hair in all its visibly kinky, non-straight glory and even flattened it on top of her head to get rid of the kinky rise. I don't think a woman with straight hair has ever had it all chopped off like that. She wonders if the magazine was uncomfortable showing unrelaxed (non-chemicalized) coily African hair. She's right to complain, IMHO coz they didn't retouch her, they got rid of her hair entirely like it wasn't ok. Also, careful about assuming that short hair is always natural. Women use all kinds of texturizers and such on that kind of short hair quite often. The long hair in the magazine shot is definitely not chemicalized. You can tell from the curls and also how it doesn't lie flat at the top of her head, it's her natural hair, just long.

Ok.  Whatever their intentions to my untrained eye, I see a more African looking result.  Not less.  If her complaint is she wanted that ponytail included, then I see the point.  But to suggest it makes her more African looking?  I am not on board.  In fact her natural hair is kinky, not curly.

[Dear Mami]

I think Lupita's complaint is that they chopped off her long African hair in all its visibly kinky, non-straight glory and even flattened it on top of her head to get rid of the kinky rise. I don't think a woman with straight hair has ever had it all chopped off like that. She wonders if the magazine was uncomfortable showing unrelaxed (non-chemicalized) coily African hair. She's right to complain, IMHO coz they didn't retouch her, they got rid of her hair entirely like it wasn't ok. Also, careful about assuming that short hair is always natural. Women use all kinds of texturizers and such on that kind of short hair quite often. The long hair in the magazine shot is definitely not chemicalized. You can tell from the curls and also how it doesn't lie flat at the top of her head, it's her natural hair, just long.

Ok.  Whatever their intentions to my untrained eye, I see a more African looking result.  Not less.  If her complaint is she wanted that ponytail included, then I see the point.  But to suggest it makes her more African looking?  I am not on board.  In fact her natural hair is kinky, not curly.

I get how you see that, Termi. What I think is meant by the Eurocentric comment is a larger context than is apparent from the pics, the stuff I was talking about with my anecdote. Puffy dos are seen as untidy/unkempt so your option is to straighten your hair and when that becomes cumbersome the compromise is to cut it and keep it short. The puffy in-your-face fro or ponytails are deemed unacceptable to some extent. That's what she's referring to, that they seem to have done the usual thing of deeming her puff untidy/unkempt and simply getting rid of it for a 'neater' look (It's almost like they are saying no hair is better than African hair). I agree, the shorter look seems more African than a ponytail especially to an African jamaa but I think Lupita was deliberately defying the silent pressure to straighten longer African hair so that seeing her puff unceremoniously chopped off was like seeing that old Eurocentric bias against kinky/curly puffy hair reinforced that has African/black women feeling they are not neat or professional unless they chemically alter their long hair to make it straighter.

[vooke]

On a different note,
I hate (yes hate) watching any of these negroes just because of the great extents they go to cook they hair.While Nyongo is on a Negro-hair-is-ok campaign, they use their stage to tell us that's shiet. I'll listen but not watch. The hair distracts.





Joseph Matco
Chris Oyakhilome
Maurice Oloo

Ministers of the gospel

[Kim Jong-Un's Pajama Pants]

On a different note,
I hate (yes hate) watching any of these negroes just because of the great extents they go to cook they hair.While Nyongo is on a Negro-hair-is-ok campaign, they use their stage to tell us that's shiet. I'll listen but not watch. The hair distracts.





Joseph Matco
Chris Oyakhilome
Maurice Oloo

Ministers of the gospel

That is still Negro hair.  It's just one of the things you can do with it.  A hairstyle.  I have never seen a white man with hair like that.

[vooke]

On a different note,
I hate (yes hate) watching any of these negroes just because of the great extents they go to cook they hair.While Nyongo is on a Negro-hair-is-ok campaign, they use their stage to tell us that's shiet. I'll listen but not watch. The hair distracts.

Joseph Matco
Chris Oyakhilome
Maurice Oloo

Ministers of the gospel

That is still Negro hair.  It's just one of the things you can do with it.  A hairstyle.  I have never seen a white man with hair like that.

[Kim Jong-Un's Pajama Pants]

On a different note,
I hate (yes hate) watching any of these negroes just because of the great extents they go to cook they hair.While Nyongo is on a Negro-hair-is-ok campaign, they use their stage to tell us that's shiet. I'll listen but not watch. The hair distracts.

Joseph Matco
Chris Oyakhilome
Maurice Oloo

Ministers of the gospel

That is still Negro hair.  It's just one of the things you can do with it.  A hairstyle.  I have never seen a white man with hair like that.

I hear you.  Whatever people do with their bodies, as long as they are grown ups, that's their bidness.  My beef is when someone tries to say, find me beautiful in such and such a manner.  You cannot prescribe that to people. 

[Dear Mami]

Cmon Termi, Lupita isn't saying that at all. She's saying "Dont change my look to fit your notion of beauty". That's totally different. Everyone is free to like what they like but also to have the look they have chosen for themselves.

[Globalcitizen12]

Lupita looks like her dad..how much money did she make on her debut movie..at this rate she may have to get a job

[Dear Mami]

Lupita looks like her dad..how much money did she make on her debut movie..at this rate she may have to get a job

Lupita is doing much better than most black actresses in Hollywood actually. She has lots of endorsement deals and is now shooting for a major blockbuster called black panther. Her "Queen of Katwe" did badly at the box office and her role in Star wars wasn't a visible one but she's doing ok. Black actors and especially actresses struggle to land roles in Holly wood. Will Smith and Denzel are flukes. All the others including even kina Eddie Murphy tend to do well by crafting movies for themselves. They don't easily become mainstream and get the best roles handed to them like Will and Denzel. I don't expect Lupita will get very many roles but she's doing ok all things considered. I read somewhere she has like 5 million dollars to her name which is something!

[Kim Jong-Un's Pajama Pants]

Cmon Termi, Lupita isn't saying that at all. She's saying "Dont change my look to fit your notion of beauty". That's totally different. Everyone is free to like what they like but also to have the look they have chosen for themselves.

black is beautiful and that the magazine should embrace that.  I am not convinced the magazine intended to suggest otherwise.  Her hair was cropped to make space for a headline.

[Dear Mami]

Lol! Terminator, don't you agree that black is beautiful? Ama living in bazungu country since the nineties has changed everything for you? Why shouldn't the magazine embrace that? Surely that is a good thing?....

[Kim Jong-Un's Pajama Pants]

Lol! Terminator, don't you agree that black is beautiful? Ama living in bazungu country since the nineties has changed everything for you? Why shouldn't the magazine embrace that? Surely that is a good thing?....

It's beautiful.  But it does not need to be validated by bazungu.  In any case it comes in many flavors.  There are those who will find Lupita beautiful.  Others will find a different type beautiful.  I am partial to Southern African types of black beauty.

[veritas]

It looks like a bad perm what was her stylist thinking? Stylish is such: