Okay so about a month ago, a popular Youtuber named Jouelzy made a video (the video above) about being over the natural hair community and texture discrimination. She was basically saying that she provides valuable information and quality videos and has 80,000 subscribers and doesn’t get any shine from hair companies or hair events. She says she sees girls with half the amount of subscribers and half the amount of views she has get plenty of love. Why? Her theory is because they have the pretty, mixed girl, soft, bouncy hair with the baby hairs while Jouelzy has 4c kinky hair that doesn’t shine, bounce, or curl at all.
(Disclaimer: 3a-3c hair is hair that has some curl to it. Think of Tracey Ellis Ross. She has 3c hair. 3a and 3b hair is basically just a little curlier than hers. Picture you wet your hair. How it’s curly and straight and thin? THat’s 3a and 3b hair. 4a hair is kinky hair but it still has some curl to it but ‘ts still hard to manage. 4c hair is what people might call nappy hair. It’s hard to comb through, it’s hard to do anything with. It’s like Lupita’s hair. ALso, curly hair is any hair that has a curl to it. Kinky hair is nappy hair, hair that has no curl in it whatsoever.)
This video sparked a lot of debate and a lot of responses from other vloggers and bloggers. Some agreed and some didn’t. One who didn’t was a very very other popular vlogger named Taren Guy (This is Taren’s response ) on the topic and they broke it down for me much better. So I went back to Jouelzy’s video with the knowledge I learned from them and completely understood and agreed with what she was saying. So, thumbs up to Joulezy!
Yesterday I believe, Taren uploaded her response to the topic. While the title of the video was “natural hair boxes is bullshit” I think her video was a bunch of bullshit. She sounded like the defensive light skin curly haired girl who didn’t get it. First of all WE black people didn’t create the light skin vs dark skin thing, so don’t put that on us. It was a tool created to divide us that we adopted from slavery, just like so many other things adopted from slavery. Also saying “it doesn’t matter” is bullshit. No, colorism is live and real and it does matter to some. Should it matter? Absolutely not! But it does and saying it doesn’t is not helping anything. Also, I believe natural hair boxes can be very useful. It’s no problem with identifying yourself as curly haired or kinky haired. Because what happens is, sometimes a kinky haired girl might think she has curly hair or might not understand that curly hair and kinky hair doesn’t do the same thing and you need to follow what a kinky hared girl does if you want to achieve a look because she can help you more because her hair is more like yours. And not enough curly girls say that in their videos. They usually deem what they are doing as universal when it’s not. Certain things work better for certain textures. So no realizing that natural hair is different for a lot of people is important and not doing so can be very confusing. It’s when you put one above the other and deem one as better is where the problem lies. I also kind of agreed on what she said about the media part, but most of it was a bunch of bull. Also when I watched Taren’s earlier video about loving your hair and loving what it naturally does, I agreed with a lot of stuff she was saying but I gave her a side eye because I was like “of course you can say that, it’s easy for you!” I was like it’s easy for you to talk about loving your hair just the way it is when your hair is naturally curly, shiny bouncy, and socially accepted. It’s easy for you to say love your hair without manipluatling it and love it without a style when you don’t have to style your hair but it looks styled because that’s the way it naturally is! It’s hard for kinky haired girls to accept their shrinkage, and their dryness and roughness and for you to think that they will do that because light skinned mixed chick said so is just ignorant. I understood what she was saying, but a message like that resonates to me much better when it comes from a girl who’s hair is nappy and doesn’t shine and takes 6 hours to wash and detangle and isn’t socially accepted.
Okay so now my thoughts about “is their texture discrimination in the natural hair community.” Well I don’t think I’m apart of that community, I honestly don’t know how you become a part of it. But I’m heavy into natural hair on Youtube and natural hair in real life and in the media. So is their texture discrimination for natural hair period? I would say YES!
As far as Youtube goes, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen the light skin, mixed girl with super easy, super curly hair, with a boring personality, lackluster videos, and unoriginal content but she has 100,000 subscribers with like 80 videos. Meanwhile, dark skinned 4c sister over here with valuable information, great personality, and original content almost gets no love. I just sit there like really? How is that possible? it’s possible because mixed girl’s hair is pretty. It’s pretty from beginning to end. It’s easy to comb through, it’s easy to style, it’s just easy. No one wants to look at home girl with the 4c hair, that’s dry from the start, that’s shrinked up, and is hard to comb through and looks short and has to stretch her hair just to get some length. No one wants to see that not even 4c girls. It’s not pretty. I’m not saying 4c hair isn’t pretty because I love it, but the overall view point of other people is it’s not pretty. You know why I say that? Because most naturals don’t have 3a-3c hair, but those girls get most of the attention. So I know people who don’t even have 3 hair watch them religiously, but hardly anyone watches the 4c girl. And it’s okay to watch girls with different hair than you because you can learn something from people who don’t have the same texture as you, but if you can watch girls with looser textures than you, why can’t you watch girls with tighter textures than you?
Also the media. The media portrays natural hair as super curly, super big, super shiny hair when that’s not what everyone’s hair looks like. I mean I see products and they advertise girls like that on the packaging and I don’t buy it because I know those products weren’t made for me and won’t work on my hair. The kinky haired girls hardly get any love in the media. But Taren made a great point about this. She basically said stop complaining about the media and be the representation you want to see. She said that a few years ago, companies weren’t making products for natural hair but now they are which is true. She said the media gives us what they think we want so you can’t blame the media, you have to make an effort to be what you want to see. I agree with that, but here’s the catch. Black girls want to see curly hair as the face of natural hair.
Black girls don’t want 4c hair. I know so many girls that went natural that were relieved that their hair wasn’t nappy. I know so many girls that won’t go natural because they don’t want nappy hair. And just in case you are wondering, I am transitioning but I have enough natural hair to say what type I am. I believe most of my hair is curly. It’s a very very tight curly but there’s some curl there and to tell you the truth, I was so happy when I realized that and I still am. I’m cool with big hair that’s hard to comb through that takes a lot to hold moisture but as long as I would have a curl, I would be good. So just because you are natural doesn’t mean you all of a sudden are enlightened and it doesn’t mean that a divide won’t happen in the natural hair community because there is a divide in the black community. So why do you think it won’t happen in the hair community? It was always there it just was never talked about. But now that the community is so big, it had to be brought it.
And the people who brought it up were the kinky haired girls.
Its so funny because on Youtube it’s literally 2 sides. All the kinky haired girls believe there is texture discrimination while all the curly haired girls don’t understand it, they think kinky haired girls are just complaining and think they are being negative. When can’t someone expressing their opinion based off of what they see be just that? Why does it have to be complaining for no reason? I mean so many kinky haired girls see the discrimination so you trying to tell em that they all are just bitter mad black women?
The bottom line is, in society light skin is generally looked at as more appealing than dark skin. Curly hair is looked at as more appealing than kinky hair. Because light skin and curly hair is closer to the European standard of beauty so anything that’s closer to that always wins. That’s the black ass bottom line. So on the flip side to that, dark skin and kinky hair is looked at as less appealing. And yeah you can say that “I think all skin tones and all hair textures are beautiful” mess all you want but your opinion ain’t the only one that matters. Let’s stop trying to hide the hurt and deal with it. Kinky haired girls feel neglected from the natural hair community just like they feel neglected from life. And instead of curly girls getting offensive and trying to dismiss their feelings, you should listen because you might learn something.
Yes their is discrimination. Yes their is a divide. Yes their are problems in the community just like there are problems in every community. Will we solve them? Probably not but talking about them only helps.
crazybabyy 
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