An AMAZING article from nachalooman.wordpress.com that I HAD share. So true!
I remember back in the 1970s when the movie “10″ with Bo Derek first came out. She had her hair braided in cornrows which was the first time I had seen the style on a white women. I didn’t actually see the film, but saw the ads and Bo’s pictures everywhere. I remember that she was celebrated for being a beautiful woman, but when she came out with her black girl cornrows and beads, she became a goddess to untold millions of white men. Back in those days, posters were all the rage, and women like Bo Derek became millionaires just by having creative control over the posters that they did. Bo Derek had that exotic thing going on with her braids and no doubt sold millions of her posters. BTW, it was her husband who encouraged her to get the style he saw on the sisters in LA.
Ironically, during that same time period, I also remember reading in Essence Magazine I think, about black women who started showing up at work in the beautiful cornrow styles. Not surprisingly, the same style that was so beautiful and exotic on Bo Derek, was considered unkempt and unprofessional on black women in corporate America, no matter how conservatively the braids were done. Sisters who were stewardesses, or who had broken in to corporate America were now being harassed or even being fired for daring to show up at work wearing the cornrow hairstyle.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. These days, we see a change in things only in that white women are more aggressive in going for what they desire.
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