Opinion

The Curly Nikki Controversy & My Thoughts on the “natural hair movement”!

Hey Curlies,

I have been wanting to chime in on this for some time…as an organizer of a meetup group and various natural hair, health and beauty related events in Detroit, MI>>>it would proably be wise…but I can’t stay quiet anymore on this one.

CurlyNikki.com, created by natural hair blogger Nikki Walton, is one of the premeire go to sites on all things natural hair related. Nikki Walton also recently published a book in 2013 – “Better Than Good Hair: The Curly Girl Guide to Healthy, Gorgeous Natural Hair!” CurlyNikki.com typically features natural hair bloggers, guest blog posts, advice, natural hair styling tips, etc. I have followed CurlyNikki.com since I big chopped back in April 2012. I love and will continue to love CurlyNikki.com as much as the next naturalista!

Here is where the whole thing began>>>the supposed Curly Nikki controversial post!>>>here! CurlyNikki.com featured a Caucasian woman with wavy hair (beautiful if I might say) on the site for the first time that I have ever saw in my little life of being natural. I thought the post was interesting when I first saw it as I actually follow Sarah, the glam chica in the post, on Youtube because I like watching hair videos regardless of hair type. It was a little out of the norm for the site but honestly not surprising>>>I mean CurlyNikki.com is affiliated with NaturallyCurly.com. I feel like naturallycurly.com is the only social site where I see acceptance of all types of textures.

There was a huge uproar from the natural hair social community, that Sarah should or should not have been featured, that the natural hair community is for and or not for specific races implying some race exclusivity, and that Cacasian women should should just support the natural hair movement>>>blah blah blah! I feel like the movement to embrace your the natural texture of your hair is one movement. To me the “natural hair movement” involves embracing your natural hair regardless of ethnicity or texture. In the article, Sarah was embracing her natural curls and there is nothing wrong with that! We all do many things to manipulate our hair>>>I mean, who goes out the house without doing anything to it? The “natural hair movement” is not some exclusive thing to me for one race.  (Side note and ramble: Those bantu knot outs, styles acheived with curlformers and heat styling, braid outs and twists outs, that some women rock look closely similar to Sarah’s waves…I’m just saying…)

There seems to be a line drawn in the sand sometimes regarding if you have curly and wavy hair versus kinky and coily hair as far as social media is concerned. I honestly feel like this line shouldn’t exist. On the other hand, I do know that social media kind of assists with this distincition, for instance, look at Instagram>>>I can’t name one Instagram page besides @naturallycurly that features all types of textures. I tend to see more sites that focus on type 3C and 4a textures exclusively. I see even less sites that focus on 4b and 4c textures with the exception of @4chairchicks. Embrace the Natural You’s Instagram page, @embracethenaturalyou, run by your’s truly, finds it even harder to feature pics of natural 4b and 4c textures. There should honestly be no issue with social sites determining their content and posting things relevant to their intended core audience. This is why I see no issue with CurlyNikki.com’s orginal post.

I honestly would like to feature more curly hair girls of different ethnicities on all of the Embrace the Natural You social media sites. As my audience evolves then so shall Embrace the Natural You. I never started Embrace the Natural You just exclusively for the traditional African American textures such as 3c, 4a, 4b, and 4c but the intent of this endeavor was to motivate women of all ethnicities and hair types to embrace their natural hair and beauty. My intent was to bring women together to educate them on hair texture, hair styling, with health, wellness and beauty coming along later as ETNY evolved. Embrace the Natural You actually started off as an extension of this blog, which was originally solely about my hair journey, which was previously known as Anyiah Essentials. In an effort to unify Anyiah Essentials and Embrace the Natural You then I proceeded with renaming the original Instagram page (formerly @anyiahessentials) to @embracethenaturalyou. At this point, on the Instagram page, I do tend to feature styles that I would like to wear and those of individuals that hashtag us and I intend for that to change as Embrace the Natural You events are attended by various women of different ethnicities and curl patterns and textures. Feel free to evolve with us!

What did you think of the CurlyNikki.com post? In essence, I believe that if you don’t like the conent of some sites, your entitled to state your opinion and no one can stop you from stating it but you could just do as I do and simply unsubscribe to sites that you have no interest in seeing. 🙂

Check out more articles related to this controversy below…womp!

~Embrace the Natural You~ 

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