Growing up…I transitioned from an all black private school to an all white public school… My lips were too big and my curly “Ms. Frizzel” hair (as they used to call it) was made fun of all because I actually had a top lip and my hair wasn’t like their long dull straight hair… Now…watching this I am most disturbed by the fact that the women making the video have zero idea that they are culturally appropriating the nuances of beauty that woman of color are taught to dislike about themselves. Until I grew to love who I am, I would straighten my hair and subdue my features… It’s almost like they are saying our beauty traits are a “style” or “fad” and really only attractive, cute, or unique when they rock them… Feel Free to post an opposing view… if you have one…I will counter whatever it is with sunless tanner and pictures of Bo Derek with cornrows…
Check out the article I got the videos from written by my friend Carla Thomas of STYLE & GRACE
White Girl Beauty Hacks I Want No Parts Of – Style and Grace.
Lost Below The Fold 
I shouldn’t be surprised by a beauty product that promises politically charged cultural appropriation.
Maybe it’s Rachel Dolezal’s story recently shifting important conversations about race towards, well, Rachel Dolezal. Or maybe it’s Charleston. Or both.
But right now this lip enhancement video is utterly disturbing. You write elsewhere that the earth might swallow it all up. Perhaps this video is a precursor: the wealthy trying to take in their whims with little sucking motions, just before the earth responds by opening wide to swallow them instead?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Wow! You have basically encapsulated what I have been feeling for the past year…. Question is: what to do but write?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Write, yes! And start conversations. Like this one. And hope they spread.
I’m eager to share your post with my students this Fall, to watch this video and try to dig past the surreality into a dialogue about how we recognize events and ideas and schemes for what all they are, and to think about how we might change the world rather than buying into it as it is.
I can’t give up the hope that acknowledging social ills and recognizing our individual and collective power can affect change. Because if I do, then I’ve no answer but to wait for someone else to start a revolution or for all of us to fall into some kind of dystopia even worse than our current consumerism, racism, wage gap, sexism, agism – fill in the blank.
Thanks for a great post!
LikeLiked by 1 person
You…people like you and this response are the reasons I’m still posting… I would love to know what you students feel about all of this… they are our future…Their opinion is what counts.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’ll report back this Fall!
LikeLiked by 1 person