Jay Xo ✨

The other day someone retweeted a picture of Idris Elba with an accompanying quote that said he didn’t date Black American women only Africans because Black American women wear weave and make-up and don’t let their natural beauty show.

Let me stop you there.

First of all, I’m Maury Povich 1000% percent sure that Idris Elba never said that. But that’s not the point. The point is that the number of responses it got and men who agreed. STOP THAT SHIT.

Stop using celebrities to validate your misogynoir and just admit you don’t love Black women. As Drake would say MFs NEVA LOVED US. I have seen way too many times Black men trying to be “pro-black” by “encouraging” women to be “natural” and be “proud” of their “natural beauty”. Making disparaging remarks about us wearing weave, about us wearing make-up, have fake nails. WHATEVER IT MAY BE.

1. Stop associating these things you view as “negative” with Black women. White women wear weave as well (however its called ‘extensions’ because respectability). Stop acting like they don’t wear make-up and don’t get their nails done with acrylic and gel and whatever the hell else. Your so called encouragement is really just hatred in sheep’s clothing.

2. Stop saying any behavior Black women do, that you don’t find respectable, is a result of “low self esteem”. Please chill out. Stop centering low self-esteem and self-hatred and all these other things on Black women. We love us. You don’t. I acknowledge that eurocentric beauty standards have become the norm. But that doesn’t mean we want to be white. It doesn’t mean we hate our hair if we wear weave. You holler so much about black women conforming to eurocentric beauty standards then when you see a White woman with a quote on quote “black girl booty” you’re about to jump off a damn cliff to have a chance to be with someone who has the only thing you ever loved about us: our bodies. You don’t love Black women B!! You like blackness but you don’t like us.

3. If you’re going to be for Black people, stop trying to police our  respectability, how we look, dress, wear our hair. What it really sounds like is that you want us to fall more in line with Whiteness. What you preach against. You want us to wear our hair “natural” yet have no idea what it’s even like to maintain hair in it’s natural state. you know nothing of the time, the pain, or le scruggle with the kinky hair you so wish we had. You think we put on make-up because we’re insecure yet don’t acknowledge why you believe everything we do is for the gaze of men (which is extremely heteronormative btw).