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Culture April 24, 2017
“How did they manage to ‘All Lives Matter’ a hair product?”
On Monday Twitter caught wind of Shea Moisture’s controversial new campaign to “break free from hair hate.”
The natural hair brand curiously featured three white women and only one black woman as it discussed the struggles of dealing with “hair hate.” The white women in the commercial discussed “serious” struggles such as “having” to die their red hair blonde. How brutal.
Meanwhile, the black woman talked of getting teased by having paper thrown into her natural curls. Of course, that’s only a fraction of what black women face when they wear their natural hair. We’ve written before about the bias against black women with natural hair.
So you can understand why black women wouldn’t take too kindly to a natural haircare brand comparing their serious problems to the – let’s be real – more trivial issues of the white women… who for some reason dominated the commercial.
And black women on Twitter were quick to share their frustrations. “SheaMoisture is CANCELLED,” Twitter user @girlswithtoys posted.
“The amount of coins black women have invested in their expensive ass products and they have the nerve to pull some ‘all hair types matter,’” @peachyscene tweeted.
And @RobJustJokin echoed that sentiment, posting, “How did they manage to ‘All Lives Matter’ a hair product?”
Twitter user @girlswithtoys also pointed out the incredible difference between attitudes toward white and black women’s natural hair. “BW haven’t experienced ‘hair hate.’ We experience something far worse. The nerve to say WW have experienced anything that could even compare.”
Kimberly N. Foster tweeted, “Black women built SheaMoisture. And not the ‘I was teased for having good hair’ Black women. Black women will take it right down too.”
Shea Moisture seems to be forgetting an important rule of marketing… know your audience. And also, you know, don’t be a dick and trivialize other people’s suffering to sell haircare products. Just a thought.
