I messed up

In relation to my last post, this one.

Someone has emailed me privately and very politely (more than I deserve) pointed out to me that the hairstyle I refer to as “crazy” in the photograph in that post is in fact a very common hairstyle for African and African descended girls. They were understandably offended that I described the hairstyle as crazy. Now that they’ve told me this I can of course recall seeing the hairstyle many times on little girls, but I rarely recall seeing the hairstyle on white girls (at least in the places where I’ve grown up) such as is seen in this photo and so had not initially recognised the context of the hairstyle. However, I write on the Internet, a place broader than my own backyard and I need to think accordingly.

When I referred to it as “crazy” I was thinking it seemed like a lot of effort for the mother to style such short hair that way, on twins no less, and at least in my experience of doing little (white) girls’ hair it has been a pain in the arse to manipulate into tiny little pigtails. But all the same, crazy was not a good way to describe the hairstyle. And now that I am aware of messing up, I apologise completely for being racist.

(Also you may recall that I have a history of being a little lazy with doing little girls’ hair, so in general I should just shut it on the topic of hairstyles for little girls).

P.S. I just spoke to my partner about this post and he is little appalled with me. He pointed out that the little girls in the photo, and for all I know, the mother too, may be of colour. I have total white privilege going on. Sorry again.