Kylie Jenner Started Wigs? Have A Seat!
Kylie Jenner tells Marie Claire that she pretty much single-handedly inspired everyone to start wearing wigs. Because, apparently, nobody was doing this before Kylie Jenner came into the limelight and made it popular.
“I started wigs, and now everyone is wearing wigs. Kim [Kardashian] just used my wig guy last night…I just do whatever I want to do, and people will follow.”
Now, that last part is unfortunately true. Kylie has been seen wearing several different wigs,, — pink, teal, blonde — but to just assume that her wearing them made it “a thing,” is almost laughable. And it is just another example of somebody in the Kardashian/Jenner gene pool picking up on a trend that was already established, and acting as if it’s brand new while feeling some kind of ownership over that trend. Of course, Kim and Khloé Kardashian, along with Kylie, have been the main proponents of this lately.
The Internet went into a tizzy when Kim Kardashian was seen plastered all over every huge media outlet, talking about her “boxer braids.” People on Twitter were real quick to point out the fact that Kim was actually just wearing cornrows, and it should have been “box braids” instead of “boxer braids.” Black women, in particular, have been wearing cornrows and have been ridiculed and mocked because of it for centuries; not to mention all of the countless Black men (Snoop Dogg, Allen Iverson, etc.) who were sporting cornrows in the ’90s.
Boxer braids AKA dutch braids. Get the low down on our blog with top tips from @patrick_hair https://t.co/XfjJimZa1D pic.twitter.com/sTAdQOJQ2S
— Beauty Works (@beauty_works) February 19, 2016
Kylie Jenner has the 50+ million followers on social media, her PUMA collection, a mobile game and her very own cosmetics line, so naturally if she does something she will have an army of fans following in her footsteps. The problem, here in particular, is the Kardashian’s/Jenner’s growing obsession and fetish-ization with Black culture, from Kylie’s lips to both Khloé and Kim’s butts. Is it just coincidental that they just all happen to love dating Black men? They live in their own plastic bubbles where they don’t have to deal with anybody criticizing their decisions, and are in relationships with Black men who are perfectly fine with what they’re doing.
Kylie Jenner making this statement about her love of wigs (which will probably be trademarked at some point) is just one part of a bigger problem. America has a very serious problem with how often it absolutely loves to celebrate and revel in mediocre white celebrities and their activities.
Black people, or people of color, practice a particular trend that’s already been well-established, but it gets largely ignored by the mass media. But then, when a young celebrity who happens to be white gets a hold of that trend, it catches on and becomes the biggest thing in the world.
The ignorance of taking something from any culture and refusing to engage with people of that culture, and who claim you’re being disrespectful, just doesn’t look as if it will be going away anytime soon. It’s often explained away with statements like, “but I’m dating a Black person, I can’t be racist,” or, “you’re taking it too seriously, get over it and leave me alone.” Refusal to engage in at least a conversation about the inappropriate nonsense is really the most infuriating sin in all of this.
This will not be the last time Kylie Jenner does something like this again this year, folks, we’ve got another 8 months of 2016 to go.
It seems that a lot of this can be summed up with one, albeit cynical, sentence. Nothing in this country exists until white people discover it.
[Photo by Ben Gabbe/Getty Images for NYFW: The Shows]
