Models wearing cornrows at the recent Valentino show in Paris. CreditPatrick Kovarik/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
There’s no way to sugarcoat this: I always experience a flash of annoyance when I see white girls wearing cornrows. Maybe it’s because the hairstyle is being marketed as “new and trendy.” Or it could be that I, as a black woman, know it’s not a style white girls wore when I was growing up, and that they often mocked me for wearing it.
I get it; it’s a cool look. But the annoyance was still there in September as I perused backstage beauty looks at the Desigual show during New York Fashion Week and noticed the hairstylists cornrowing the heads of the (mostly white) models.
The hairstylist for Desigual, Edward Lampley, shared with me that the inspiration for the cornrows actually came from Japanese street culture, with no nod to African culture.
“We found these incredible kids who were just doing things differently,” Mr. Lampley said. “It’s about a beautiful woman at the end of the day, or at least an interesting woman.”
Valentino did acknowledge that its October show at Paris Fashion Week was inspired by African culture. The hairstylist for it, Guido Palau, created cornrows with a braided bun at the top. Fashionista.com reported that only 10 of the models in the show were black, and it was only a matter of minutes after images of the white models wearing cornrows spread around the Internet that several people decried the show.
“Valentino with the African/tribal inspo and 90% white girls in corn rows on the runway. Ughhhh.*indefinite eye roll*” Andrea @notandyy wrote.
“Valentino really has GOT to stop with the cornrows on white models,” wrote Brooke Windham @coleneiers.
But hair is just hair, and every woman should be able to wear it as she wants, right?
Growing up in a tiny East Texas town, I was enamored with cornrows after seeing other black girls in my class wearing them. I loved how intricate the designs could be and especially loved styles with colored beads woven into them. To me, not only was the look beautiful, but cornrows were also a short cut to avoiding the dreadful weekly hair pressings.
Pressing hair involved heating a comb (also known as a hot comb) on a stove and passing it through the hair from root to tip to straighten it. This arduous, sometimes hourslong process usually culminated in the burning of my scalp or the tips of my ears (because sometimes I wasn’t quick enough in grabbing and folding them down).
This was usually completed on Saturday in the kitchen by either my grandmother or mother, with gospel music playing in the background, so that my hair would be fresh for church on Sunday morning. I hated the entire process, and no amount of whining, pleading or cajoling would make it go away.
Cornrows would be my way out, and I looked forward to getting them each summer so that I could jump into pools and run free without worrying about having a hot comb anywhere near my head. But while I loved the look, I didn’t love the white girls at school who deemed my hairstyle “weird looking” or “ghetto.”
From left, clockwise: Bo Derek, Amanda Seyfried, Melanie Griffith, Fergie, Lena Dunham and Miley Cyrus wearing the style.CreditWarner Bros., via Associated Press; INFPhoto.com; Brenda Chase/Newsmakers; A. Rodriguez/BEImages; Douglas Gorenstein/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank, via Getty Images; Krista Schlueter for The New York Times
Yes, I understood that not everyone will love what you do to your hair, but my feelings were still hurt, and I remember wondering why these insults were heaped on my hairstyle.
Cornrows originated in Africa and were predominantly worn by women. I remember my grandmother telling me stories as she braided my hair about how her mother used to do the same thing, and her mother before her, to protect their hair while out in the fields picking cotton.
“Cornrows was our way to connect back to a lost land,” said Michaela Angela Davis, a cultural critic and writer in New York. “We knew where they came from and they couldn’t steal or beat it out of us. It’s black and they know it.”
Plenty of high-profile white women — most famously, Bo Derek in the 1979 movie “10” — have publicly worn cornrows, including Madonna, Melanie Griffith, Christina Aguilera, Kristen Stewart and Lena Dunham. It’s not uncommon now to scroll Instagram and see celebrities like Cara Delevingne on a red carpet or Kylie Jenner in a selfie pose, wearing them.
Bethann Hardison, a pioneering black runway model and a well-known advocate for diversity in fashion, said that she was not offended when she saw white women wearing cornrows, especially on the runways.
“I never think anything is wrong with people adapting,” she said of the white models at Valentino. “Hair is hair, and I never feel like it’s wrong.”
Similarly, Anthony Dickey, a hairstylist and the owner of Hair Rules, a New York salon that caters to textured hair, said he did not take offense in seeing cornrows on the runways because he loves all things hair.
“I worked in fashion shows throughout the ’90s,” Mr. Dickey said. “White girls should be able to wear their hair however they like, just like black girls.” He said that he believes magazines need to be more reflective of their readers and use beauty images to accurately showcase our diverse world. “If skin texture and hair texture were treated equally,” he said, “we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
Jamie Stone, a blogger in Los Angeles, is white and first wore cornrows when she was 18 and vacationing in the Bahamas.
“I honestly thought the Bahamian women had beautiful hair, and I wanted to try it out for myself,” she said. “There was no malicious intent of any kind, and I did black hair while fully appreciating and acknowledging the cultural relevancy of it.” Ms. Stone, who blogs for HonestlyJamie.com, added that she was a little sad that hair has become so racially charged.
“Do I think any woman should be telling another woman how to wear her hair?” she asked. “No. I do understand why this might be offensive to some, but not all, black women. I’m not ignorant to that, and I appreciate and understand the history.”
Aly Walansky, a journalist in Brooklyn who is white, argued that it was not O.K. for white people to wear historically black styles.
“Black hairstyles aren’t just about hair,” Ms. Walansky said. “Black hair has a history and culture behind it. White women like, say, Miley Cyrus, thinking she can go onstage and just ignore that context and wear it — it really is the hair version of wearing blackface.”
There will always be varying schools of thought about what’s culturally appropriate when it comes to hairstyles, but I am not sure that the annoyance I feel when I see cornrows on white girls will ever disappear. Perhaps if my childhood experiences had been different I would be more accepting. Maybe if I were able to open a beauty magazine like Allure and see more black hairstyles instead of stories on how to create an Afro with a picture of a white model attached to it, I wouldn’t care so much.
“Our hair is a sacred thing,” said Ms. Davis, the writer. “You can either accept that or not.” Although she doesn’t blame white people for wanting to do it,” she said, “look at what you’re stepping into. You can’t just take it and not deal with us.”
