Beauty

On Selling the Dream of “Good Hair” to Naturalistas…

This post was going to be all about how much I love Mizani’s D’Tangle spray, which works wonders on my second day hair that needs a little moisture to reactivate the products I used the day before. The stuff is absolutely amazing, and leaves my hair so soft I can’t stop touching it.

But when I went to the Mizani site to get details and links for the product, I couldn’t help but be halted by this image…

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Look at this woman. Undoubtedly she’s beautiful. But to suggest that this woman represents the “true textures” of the majority of black women who wear natural hair is utterly laughable.

I tried to look at it from a marketing standpoint, just to play devil’s advocate with myself, and it got me to wondering…are they showing these images so insecure naturals might “chase the dragon” to buy product after product in hopes they might achieve this texture?

I got the idea because a reader mentioned that a natural hair blogger with looser curls gets notes from her subscribers who wish on falling stars and angels that they can do some sort of regimen, take some sort of butter or gel that will magically make their tight coils loosen like hers.

I suppose if you sell an “ideal” to a group of people and somehow convince them that if they use your product the will become some sort of 3a goddess, then I guess you have a hit on your hands.

It’s sad, though.

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