I bought the new ESSENCE and Pride mags the other day. Both mags are flawed but I read them every month if I can out of loyalty.
I know ESSENCE is not brilliant for natural hair as they cater to straight and curly hair loads but I think they have improved. However…
In this month’s ESSENCE with Obama on the cover, there was not a significant feature on natural hair, except this HIDEOUS spread on red hair. I don’t have a scanner on me but anyone who seen it, what did you all think? Should ESSENCE do it 50/50?
I mean, check out this image from the ESSENCE galleries from magazines ago:
[image: ESSENCE/i photoshopped the image to add text hence cocking it up lol]
Such a beautiful image and yet us natural girls are rarely treated to frequent natural hair styles in mags like essence, sophisticates or even pride.
Do you think that means we have the lesser hand in that we do not have a basin of inspiration compared to weaved sisters?
I would love to see regular photos of glammed up women with natural hair so I could get ideas. But obviously, natural hair is on the up but it is still not the norm or part of the norm. So I suppose until then, we will have to continue to create our own images in our head and experiment with our natural hair and see where we end up.
So we do have to create our own images. But the beauty in this is that we will enrichen the natural hair tableau with new ideas for styles.
I am very unimaginative when it comes to my naturalhair but I will now try and do more.
I know I cannot rely on salons to make my hair the way I want it, judging by my horrible experience last time.
I’d never subscribe to Essence.. I’d like to get the Braids and Natural Hair but well…damn this recession lol… but I don’t like that even on the Essence website, the “natural” styles are teased and primped and there’s just as much heat and tools used as there are for processed hair. It’s almost like, why bother?
I’ll pass and just be my own inspiration..or look for it online
I agree Purple Zoe. It is very hard to have something just 4 us.
From what I understand Essence isn’t black-owned, which would explain why it caters to eurocentric beauty ideals. We need a magazine that is truly for women of color coming from within the community.
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I don’t even buy Essence anymore. I am so done with that mag. It doesn’t offer up a diverse or expansive vision of black people @ all. There is so much more they can do. Why not create a niche mag for sista’s with natural hair? I think it would be a great idea. We need to see more anyway.
they do need to diversify the hair styles. that natura hair mag called braids and beauty is soooo wack. plus naturallyou i have yet to buy as can only fond online uk places to buy. would easier to just read a mag and see a beautifully or well put together natural hair style. the afro is just a hairstyle cop out if that is all they give.