This is regarding ONLY hair This is coming from a black poc
For the longest it has always been a debate on episode about black hairstyles and people saying “anyone can have this hairstyle” etc.
This issue has been going on for to long and the solution is really simple: If you want to use the hair go ahead no one is stopping you but if you use the style know the risk of using the style.
What risk?
The risk of people calling out your story and your characters for having a POC hairstyle. There has been a surge of episode opinion and troll instagrams and accounts on forums and they are calling out authors that use black hairstyles on Caucasian or non black characters. If you want to risk your story or characters being on one of those pages go ahead and do it because these debates and people defending certain hairstyles is silly and not worth it.
Thank you to those who try to educate users who defend the styles but at the end of the day then don’t listen and will always try to defend themselves so they can dig their own hole if they don’t want to or are not trying to see how it’s wrong
It definitely does get tiring watching people fight over using the little hair representation we get when they literally have dozens of other hairs they themselves can use instead. Not to mention that our features are always preferred and romanticized on white skin while we get made fun of or sent home from school for having our natural hair out. Or they’re like, “white people can have 4-type hair too!” Shows pic of Napoleon Dynamite. Not saying they can’t, I’m sure there’s a very small minority of white people with actual 4-type hair, but it’s not common enough for it to be portrayed as frequently as it is-- knowing our history. And don’t get me started on afro-cultural hairstyles like some locs or braids
Anyway, I don’t give a fuck anymore. I just wanted to rant.
My problem is that sometimes authors give POC hairstyles to white characters and then proceed to use straight hair on POC people. I get that there are POC women that use wigs or have hair treatments, but they are not the majority.
Yeah, but regardless of whether they are pretty or not and if white people have curly hair or dreadlocks, that’s what the topic is saying, that if you don’t have that kinda hair, don’t wear it 'cause it’s not for you, or be prepared to be called out.
Caucasian people wear dreadlocks but it’s cultural appropriation. That isn’t and in no way can be their natural hair. As for curly hair they they can have curly hair but the can’t have any kind of 4-type hair. That isn’t possible.
It is not weird that Caucasian people can’t wear POC hairstyle and POC can wear straight hair because we can straighten our hair to resemble yours but Caucasians can not do anything to their hair to make it like ours.
In the past POC have been bullied and ridiculed by Caucasians because of our hair and it would be called “nappy” and “tangled” but now Caucasians want to have our hair and that’s the problem. It isn’t right for us to be ridiculed over it but people still want it. Most POC straighter their hair to please Caucasians and to stop their ridicule over our “nappy” hair. We do that to please them so there is no way the people who make fun of us because of our hair could and should have/wear the hair.
And just like you said it’s apart of a culture. It doesn’t matter that it’s just a portal. If you want to portray a Caucasian on episode then you should never use a POC/4-type hair because they don’t have the hair in real life and people will come “at you” saying that it isn’t right and want you to change it.
I understand your frustration, but I think you misunderstood what I meant. I don’t want to make any character with poc hair. I only wanted to use it on my profile pic, because I love curly hair, and I wanted to have them here, since I can’t have them in real life. And I agree, white people who wear dreadlocks in real life to mock poc are disgusting. ( and I don’t understand how people could even MOCK those hairstyles since they’re GORGEOUS and so much more interesting than Caucasian hairstyles, I found out about it only a month ago)
oh right. It wasn’t supposed to come out this rude or accusatory, I just thought that black people were wearing straight hair out of their free will, and they simply don’t want us to wear their hair, even though they wear ours.
It isn’t uncommon for Black people or POC to have straight natural hair. It isn’t rare either, it’s quite common. Straight hair isn’t only exclusive to white people. However,
I agree with this statement. People (majority of the time it is non-POC or non-Black people) that like to point out how white people have “afro-textured” hair or as @/YourMom pointed out they like to show examples “Napoleon Dynamite” who has a very obvious different texture that is nowhere close to being afro-textured. We don’t have that many hairstyles and when we do get hairstyles- people like to fight us on who can wear this and how it doesn’t belong to just one group, which is very frustrating.
It might be annoying to see a lot of Black authors go hard for these hairstyles and features, but it is more annoying to see a lot of ignorant comments about these features.
Exactly. It’s like, as soon as we get the littlest bit of representation, many non-POC people come as if they don’t have much more variety in hair choices than we do.
Absolutely. While I do know people (they’re all Italian) with almost 4A textures, it’s an extremely rare curl type among white Caucasians.
According to some research, about 45% of white Europeans have straight hair, about 40% have waves (S-shaped ‘curls’), and only 15% have curly hair (usually a combination of S- & loose spiral-shaped curls). People with coils (so a tight 3C to 4A texture) are rather rare. Of that 15% of curly-haired white Europeans, maybe less than 10% have coils.
Now this
My mom (white, straight-haired woman) is the first to say my hair texture is basically an ‘afro’, whatever that means, and every time I have to try to explain how it looks nothing like (most of) black people’s natural hair.
No mom, it’s just a 3B. That belongs to the loose curls pattern. I’m 2 letters away from the coils
to start off, i’m white and have straight-ish hair. regardless, i understand and respect that poc want to defend their cultural assets including their natural hair. i have met several white people with curly hair, but i wouldn’t go as far as admitting it was coily (type 4). i can’t argue whether or not type 4 hair naturally occurs in white people as i have yet to come across this.
generally, it doesn’t matter if it’s a fictional story. fiction is written by real people for real people, and everyone deserves to be represented properly and equally. i personally find coily hairstyles appealing, but because that isn’t my hair, i don’t see the point in using it for my avatar or my characters unless they naturally have that type of hair. what i especially don’t find reasonable (or appropriate) is how poc features aren’t appreciated where they occur naturally (so, on poc) but rather where they’re falsified.
Yeah but if i were to say that white people can’t have 4c hair…they may find it offensive or something which is why I just added that some might to avoid getting attacked or anything
. Not saying they can’t, I’m sure there’s a very small minority of white people with actual 4-type hair, but it’s not common enough for it to be portrayed as frequently as it is-- knowing our history. And don’t get me started on afro-cultural hairstyles like some locs or braids 
