I’ve been pondering why people seem so resistant to giving their characters short Afros / IWAs - and I think it just doesn’t seem “unique” enough to white creators.
and I’d like to tell them to go to Instagram or their preferred search engine and find Black barbers showing off their work - their are so many unique shapes for hairlines and even shaved patterns!
It's also like, neither is white people having long hair or wavy hair. None of the styles white folk usually wear in these stories and pieces are "unique". Even when it's fantasy colors, it's the same old fare, just pink or blue.
So the idea that our hair has to be "unique" in some sort of way to be character design worth looking at STILL shows an antiblack bias, because why do I require "more" to be seen? Why can't you look at my regular curls at ANY length? Why can't you like my hair WITHOUT the special haircuts and beads and styles? What's wrong with that? And so in our efforts to be "different", we've rolled right back around to that same bias of Afro textured hair being less than!
I notice this when I asked about caring for hairstyles as well. White folk don't have a myriad of special styles for specific events, and you've never had to ask that. You do what you need to do, with what you have. So why would our hair care require a different mindset?
I just think that if you can't imagine your Black character with a short cut long enough to see their curl pattern and still like it, you still have a bias. Because THAT'S their hair. That's what's becoming all of these styles! Learn to respect the texture too!
