LAST WEEKEND, BEYONCÉ dropped Lemonade on the world and turned the mysterious “Becky with the good hair” into an overnight sensation.
Since then, the phrase has taken over social media, inspired approximately one million think pieces and been meme’d beyond recognition.
Yesterday, Glamour decided to weigh in and published an article entitled “Things you only know if you’re called Becky and you have good hair” in which two Glamour employees named Becky defended themselves and their “enviable tresses”.
The article has been widely criticised for ignoring the connotations of the terms ‘Becky’ ‘good hair’ in the African-American community.
‘Good hair’ is often used to describe a black person’s hair that shares characteristics with the hair of non-black people. As Rebecca Thomas of MTV explains, it’s quite a loaded term.
The idea of good hair actually has its roots in slavery, when white owners would deliberately separate and assign slaves with light skin and straighter “good hair” to household work, leaving the punishing field work to those with darker skin and kinky African hair.
‘Becky,’ meanwhile, is an umbrella term used to describe white women. (You mayremember her from the beginning of Sir Mix-a-Lot’s Baby Got Back.)
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Earlier this evening, Glamour sent a series of tweets apologising for not appreciating the significance of the terms and stated that they were “mortified”.
The article in question has since been deleted.
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