Picture this: I’m standing in line at the supermarket last night, about to pay for my groceries. The casher and bagger are both young African American females with relaxed hair. One of them appears frustrated with her hair (judging from the haphazard way in which it was styled). The bagger turns to me while bagging…
Hair
Winter Hair Care Advice from Curly Nikki
Bellas! Your girl Afrobella is having a beauty crisis of her very own. It’s getting colder and colder here in Chicago, and I can’t hide from it forever… my first winter is just around the corner. My skin’s becoming noticeably dryer, and my hair… well let’s just say my hair seems to be trying to…
What’s Good About Good Hair?
Originally posted at BVHairTalk.com. Can I be real with y’all? I’m kinda sick of Chris Rock’s Good Hair. Raise your hand if you’re with me. The endless media tour. The premature outrage. The trailer, which showed all of the docucomedy’s best clips. To paraphrase Chris Rock himself, I’m tired, tired, tired of Good Hair. So…
Team Zahara!
Thanks to all of you who have sent me that Newsweek article by Allison Samuels about Zahara Jolie Pitt and “the politics of uncombed hair.” I know y’all already know how I feel, but I wrote about it for BVHairTalk in a post titled I’m on Team Zahara! Just so everyone else knows. Is it…
The Wigs at Louis Vuitton
I’m oversensitive. I can admit it. I’ve been told that my whole life. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve gotten better at covering it up, but I’m still a pretty sensitive Piscean soul. Quick to feel empathy, quick to love, quick to be offended. So maybe I’m not the best bella to respond to the hot…
Breast Cancer and Hair Issues
Originally posted over at BVHairTalk.com. This is the time of year where pink ribbons mysteriously appear on every item at the drugstore, where annual walks are walked and funds are raised, all in the names of the Susan G. Komen fund and breast cancer research. When most people think of breast cancer, they think of…
Afrobella Meets En Vogue!
Anyone who’s been reading this here blog for a while now knows — En Vogue were among my most significant beauty icons back when I was but a greasy-faced teenager who wanted to wear makeup and feel pretty but didn’t know how. In my day, it didn’t get better. En Vogue filled an important chronological…
Oprah And Good Hair
** originally posted on BV Hair Talk. My favorite part of this week’s much-talked-about episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show where Chris Rock and Solange Knowles talked about Good Hair? That one photo of Oprah back in the Eighties. The one Chris Rock referred to as “the mean news.” Oprah had the fro that dreams…
Products For Little Black Princesses
From the minute Disney announced the first African American princess movie, The Princess and the Frog, the buzz has been building. And so has the concern. Disney’s history of racial sensitivity in their cartoons caused eyebrows to be raised early on, and understandably so — having waited this long to produce a film starring an…
Island Remede: Castor Oil
Is it just Caribbean parents who believe in giving their children weekly laxatives? I’ve heard tales from some of my Southern friends about their grandparents doing the same thing, but hardly with the same commonality as island families did. My mother spared me from the experience she had as a little one, but my grandmother…