A friend of mine who runs a blog is looking for feedback in regards to cultural standards for African American (female) hairdos. I thought maybe some of the African American women on this site could provide him with some insight.
His page is
http://fluggart.cwru.edu/ and this is the entry:
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Someone was recently trying to tell me that, for various reasons, most black models in magazines (like the Victoria's Secret Catalogs) are wearing wigs in those pictures. The implication was that their hair is harder to keep at model appearance, and that they require significantly more care.
As proof, they showed me various images from places like Victoria's Secret catalogs, which supposedly showed models whose hair didn't really look real upon close inspection. Over the weekend, I was trying to find documentation of this by searching through websites. I had trouble finding any evidence that directly supported that, but I did find this (which is hardly an authoritative source), which contained excerpts from a book, including:
"In more recent times, however, it has been acceptable simply to highlight and valorise the image of the biracial black woman. Black women models such as Naomi Campbell find that they have a greater crossover success if their images are altered by long, straight wigs, weaves, or bonded hair so that they resemble the 'wannabes' - _folks who affirm the equation of whiteness with beauty by seeking to take on the characteristic look of whiteness."
If anyone has any insight into this, I'd love to hear it, because I'm not quite sure that I actually believe it.
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