A black hair magazine has just issued an apology for using non black models with fake afros as their cover girl. What makes this so bad is that the magazine is actually called “black hair.” This magazine is dedicated to black beauty and promoting black hair products, so the readers were undeniably confused about the misrepresentation of the issues cover girl with their mission statement. After much backlash the magazine then issued an apology. Cultural appropriation has been in the news a lot lately. From the Kardashians braids to Vanessa Hudgenson poetic justice inspired look, magazines should do their due diligence to ensure that things like this do not happen. The magazine has now been slammed for cultural appropriation. The term cultural appropriation is difficult to define in specific terms but can be seen as the copying of another’s social, ethnic, or national traditions and are often delicate matters to a minority. The magazine says they did not know the model was not black. They received the picture from a third party source and they used their discretion to determine that the model was black. I don’t buy it.
Nov 212016