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- Title
Debunking Eurocentric ideals of beauty and stereotypes against African natural hair(styles): An Afrocentric perspective.
- Authors
M. E., Montle
- Abstract
The notion of African beauty cannot be divorced for binaries of the coloniser and the colonised as they are interwoven. The coloniser propagated a stereotypical association of black (Africa) with ugliness and white (West) with beauty. Amongst the tools of othering, hair had become a defining element of beauty. Historically, African identity has been epitomised by natural hair that often portrayed African women in short hair. However, colonial intervention has eroded this African understanding of beauty through Euro-centric hairstyles by making Africans believe that this age-old hair-style tradition of growing short hair is backward and barbaric. African women were proselytised into believing that everything that is Western-orientated is beautiful. This article is purely theoretical and employed a qualitative textual analysis design to examine the extent to which colonialism has moulded the perception of beauty in modern-day Africa. It has utilised the theories of Afro-centricity and Black feminism to debunk the stereotypes forged by the colonial past against black beauty. This article has found that the West, among other things, perpetuated the stereotypes against Afro-centric identities of beauty during the colonial past, culminating in the Eurocentric views of beauty being adopted and institutionalised in Africa.
- Subjects
AFRICA; AFRICANS; HAIR; BLACK feminism; PERSONAL beauty; STEREOTYPES; HAIR conditioners
- Publication
Journal of African Foreign Affairs, 2020, Vol 7, Issue 1, p111
- ISSN
2056-564X
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.31920/2056-5658/2020/7n1a5