Is Texture Discrimination Still Relevant Or Are You Choosing To Subscribe To YouTubers Based On Content?

May 20, 2014

My natural texture is a little strange, well maybe not that strange, I have looser curls in the front and back, coily curls on the sides and the middle is the kinkiest portion of it all. When I started my hair journey, I wanted to find someone who had hair like mine.

I was just getting into YouTube and blogs because I had no idea what to do with my own head of hair, and I wanted to see what other girls were doing with there own kinks. If I had to rank who I followed the most, I would say Curly Nikki back in 2008 because I felt at that time that her hair was just like mine.

She did a lot of writing back then and I learned plenty about her hair but I still felt I needed to learn about mine. Fast forward to a year after that, I started to focus on hair education, not just blogs and video tutorials but really getting to know what made my hair tick.

I am still learning, ain’t no shame in admitting that, that’s why I continue to follow blogs and YouTubers because I am interested in their own struggles, techniques and successes some of which I can apply to my own journey based on the knowledge I have gained.

With that said there has been some interesting commentary going around in the blogosphere, it started with popular Youtuber Jouelzy and the video she put out called “So Over the Natural Hair Community & Texture Discrimination. “ I watched the video once and I nodded yes throughout the whole thing, then I watched it a few more times and I nodded a little bit less, and I am going to tell you why.

Here is what I agree with, there is discrimination generally, it started a long time ago when a little black girl would look in the mirror and say, I want my hair straight and long like mommy because she believed that she was not pretty enough and neither did main stream media.

We saw in one response where a commentator mentioned that there are still some colonial minds out there that don’t like kinky hair even when it is growing from their own head. We have the example in the picture above on our own Facebook images where a woman with a three strand twist out on 3c type hair got ten thousand plus likes and three thousand plus shares versus another woman with the same hair style same length but a kinkier texture who received three thousand plus likes and only two hundred plus shares.

In reality it might be easy to just say the numbers don’t lie, ‘they shared her more because she was light skinned and her hair look like baby hair”, but is it that simple? If you look at each woman’s fan Facebook page, the kinky haired woman (Hodge Podge Files) has eight thousand plus likes while the woman with the loose texture (Alyssa Forever) has about thirteen hundred.

What validity does the kinky versus curly argument hold now? We do not perpetuate any idea that the natural hair community generally holds any texture as better than the other. As a community our self, our website does not see texture as a measure of competition or as a measure for success as a brand and we can also safely say that for some other members of the of the media and content community as well.

Our responsibility is to celebrate hair in a way that has no boundaries, no discriminatory factors with creativity and support for our afro textured sisters and people of color. While we can acknowledge that there is discrimination in some form based on individual biases it wouldn’t be fair to put the community in a box, we think the community is smarter than the trolls that might be used to define it.

Do we acknowledge that an individual may experience discrimination at some point, yes. Does it define the community? Certainly not! So whats all the fuss about? Let’s talk about clicks for a moment, as content creators, how we make money is by how much we can engage our audience to the point of clicking on our content and reading it sharing it for more clicks.

The same goes for video content, you make a cool video, people view it share it, and you smile all the way to the bank. Economics dictate that when there was less content but the demand for it was high, your content was valued more. Fast forward to today, content is high, videos are a dime a dozen, there are a million blogs, information is available for you if you need it.

This means that the average video or blog post is not as valuable anymore. The goal then is figuring out how can you set yourself apart from the herd? Some women use their personality, others use science, others use outstanding visuals, it is a lot of work and it takes time and commitment.

With that said, it is not enough for anyone who has committed to using content creation as a means of making income or other wise to point the finger at the world and say, “they are not sharing my my stuff because my hair is kinky”. As a content creator you have to define your space in a way that captures an audience beyond their expectations because frankly there is a ton of stuff we can click on out there and in some respects Jouelzy is right, sometimes they just don’t see you past the kinky hair.

What makes a YouTuber special? As a reader and blogger I watch all hair types, I love Evelyn from the Internets because she is funny, I like Naptural85 because her tutorials are well done, I like Elle/Quest For The Perfect Curl because sometimes she might review a product I might want to see and I trust that she is thorough.

The point is we believe a majority of readers and viewers know what they are looking for, know what they like and they are wise about who they choose to subscribe to. My opinion is that this conversation should not be about who likes the kinky texture versus the curly texture, I believe its more about content, personality and what you bring to the table as a vlogger or content creator that makes you special and ‘shareable’.

What makes a YouTuber special to a company? Numbers! If I sell product my main goal is to find ways to reach the most amount of people that I can in the shortest amount of time. There are vloggers out there that have a lot of followers not because they know so much about hair or that they educate their audience but they have a natural ability to connect to a variety of people.

There are others with outstanding visuals and the videos are a joy to watch so their numbers are higher for subscriptions. A company looks at those numbers and then decides this is the person I need to present my product to that wide audience and they will go as far as paying for the review if the blogger is brand smart.

Are there companies that target specific hair types? Of course! Is it discrimination or just them knowing that their product is not created for a kinky texture and they know if a woman with dense kinky hair were to try it, the quality of the product just would not suffice?

There is a lot more than discrimination at play there, and that my friends is a whole other point to consider and a whole other post. Is there a kinky hair content problem? Yes and no, we acknowledge the general love for a curly haired woman with long flowing curls, but we can’t help but acknowledge the love for a kinky haired lady with that huge luscious afro too.

They like to see some edgy stuff, meaning women who aren’t afraid to get a haircut play with color and up the ante on style. They also like interesting and real educational visually appealing content that is different from what is already there. Correct me if I am wrong but to me that has nothing to do with texture and everything to do with how creative and focused you are as a vlogger/blogger, essentially you have to bring it!

We also have to be careful about why a conversation is being started in the first place, kinky vs curly is a hot topic and we pretty much like it to remain underground because it only serves to divide a community that does not need any more division.

However when it is brought to light it creates momentum, and that is one way to increase views and clicks. The problem is, it is at the expense of the very vulnerabilities of a community trying build bridges and uplift each other, does that mean a person cannot talk about their own personal experience no matter how hard the topic? Of course not, but it means that we take that experience for what it is and not use it a means to point the finger or describe the general community.

Welp that’s my two sense, whats yours?

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