Familiarity doesn’t necessarily breed contempt — especially when it comes to travel. In my globe-trotting experience, places that remind me of somewhere else often make the best impressions.
My husband and I recently returned from a seven-day Caribbean cruise that docked for one morning and afternoon in Ocho Rios, Jamaica. It was by far my favorite day of the week, partly because the island of Jamaica gave me déjà vu vibes. It reminded me a lot of another Caribbean island, St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands, which is where I was born.
I suppose I arrived in Jamaica expecting an element of familiarity. What I didn’t anticipate was the reaction some of the locals had to my husband Jayden, a white Australian. More specifically, I was surprised — and frankly, amused — by the way many of the Jamaican women responded to Jayden. On practically every block we passed while walking through the main commercial drag, a Jamaican woman would stop him and make the same request.
“Please, let me braid your hair.”
At first, I was a little insulted: What was I — chopped liver? Then I remembered that my shaved head was hidden under a cap. There was nothing to braid anyway! Jayden politely declined each offer, which didn’t always discourage the Jamaican ladies. When they persisted, he’d bring me into it.
“Sorry, I don’t want to embarrass my husband.”
It was kind of endearing watching all these ladies throwing themselves at my husband, but I understood what he was doing. He was respectfully staying in his hair lane as a White guy while keeping racial politics out of our beautiful day on the island. Braids are so not Jayden, but I would not have been embarrassed if he had succumbed to the charms of the ladies pursuing him. And no, I wouldn’t necessarily have disapproved on the grounds of cultural appropriation either.
I’m sure cornrows is a look my husband could pull off for five minutes before the novelty wore off. I’ve yet to see a white guy who looked good in them longer than that — or who looked better with cornrows than without them. The payoff doesn’t last nearly as long as the time it takes to untangle them.
I was actually surprised that the topic of white boys and cornrows had never come up between Jayden and me. We’ve had so many discussions about race in the 12 years that we’ve known each other — including several about white women and Black hairstyles — but somehow, we’d never landed on white guys wearing braids.
I’m sure cornrows is a look my husband could pull off for five minutes before the novelty wore off. I’ve yet to see a white guy who looked good in them longer than that — or who looked better with cornrows than without them. The payoff doesn’t last nearly as long as the time it takes to untangle them. Good luck, boys.
I recently ran into someone at work whom I went out with a few times in the early 2000s. I hadn’t seen him in 20 years and didn’t recognize him until he told me his name about 30 seconds after he’d stopped me. In the beginning (circa 2000), we spent a few months exchanging flirty looks and occasional hellos in the cafeteria before we finally had our first conversation. It was on a Saturday night at Baraccuda, a gay bar in New York City, and much to my surprise and horror, his hair was braided.
This was back when “cultural appropriation” was still on the outskirts of our collective lexicon. And he was Latino, so even by 2022 standards, he might have gotten a pass because Latinos have always caught less hell than white people when they do things like plunder Black culture and use the N-word. The cornrows didn’t look terrible on him, but I much preferred his hair the way nature intended it to be. I was relieved when he showed up for our first date a week or two later without them.
To be honest, white boys wearing cornrows isn’t even near the top of my list of the most exasperating things white boys sometimes do. (See the section on Chet Hanks below.) However, a white woman who dares to sport cornrows, dreadlocks, and other hairstyles co-opted from Black global culture had better be prepared for pushback. I wonder if the white female visitors in Ocho Rios that day also got approached by local women looking to give them a cornrow makeover.
Hair is a fraught subject for Black women, and I wish more white people cared enough to understand why Black women are so protective of styles with roots in Black culture — styles that, for Black women, are as practical and functional as they are aesthetic. Black women who go natural tend to face more severe strictures. A Black man can shave his head and still be considered sexy (and not be ridiculed at the Oscars), or wear cornrows and be thought of as a catch (though braids on Black men certainly play better in sports than in predominantly white offices… or during encounters with trigger-happy cops). Maybe that’s why it’s not especially provocative for me when I see white boys looking silly with cornrows.
But as with so many things, there’s always an undercurrent of white privilege. To me, the main problem with cultural appropriation of Black culture is the plundering of Black culture without appreciating it for more than its costume value. In many cases, white people who adopt Black culture don’t even like Black people. Sometimes they do, and they still fuck up. Cornrows on a clueless white woman who would post a video of herself on Instagram calling them “Bo Derek braids” is the opposite of the “cultural appreciation” white people love to cite when they’re caught with their hands in the Black cookie jar.
That’s like calling Eminem, the best-selling rapper of all time, the Godfather of the genre. Or Chet Hanks, aka Tom’s son, a rapper who is as white as the driven snow, releasing a single called “White Boy Summer,” draping a Jamaican flag around himself on the cover, and telling Ziwe, a Black woman with her own show on Showtime, that “social justice warriors can kick rocks.” The boy is a hot mess who once actually equated white rappers to Black country music fans.
Dear Chet: As someone who was raised on country music, let me assure you, it is not cultural appropriation when a Black person loves it or sings it. Black people played a pivotal influential role in developing the genre in the early 20th century before being ostracized by the community. Read The Nashville Sound: Bright Lights and Country Music by Paul Hemphill. It’s an enlightening account of the history of country music, and Hemphill, much to my discomfort, liberally drops the N-word throughout. I suspect you’d like those parts.
Jeremy Helligar
But getting back to white women who rip off Black culture via Black hairstyles, the ones who frustrate me most are the one who sleep with and marry Black rappers and athletes and have Black babies with them but aren’t so concerned about the trials and tribulations of everyday Black people that they’d cancel an opulent wedding celebration weekend in Italy one week after 10 Black people were shot to death in a supermarket in Buffalo by a white nationalist. AMPAS probably would have had the good sense to postpone the Oscars if they had been held in late May, but in the age of social media, most celebrities think it’s good enough to offer “thoughts and prayers” after every tragedy and move on.
I think it’s mostly on our culture, one that has always valued Black entertainment more than it values Black lives. It’s a culture that would deem a Black man with cornrows “thuggish” or “too Black” while praising a white guy with braids, someone like David Beckham, as a style icon. (Beckham later told People magazine that he regretted getting them, but not for the reason that would have made me respect him more.)
It’s a culture that can turn a fairly unremarkable white woman, Bo Derek, into a superstar, for wearing a hairstyle that originated with Black women — a hairstyle that can break the internet on a white woman and still be deemed “too ethnic” or “unprofessional” when a Black woman wears it.
Bo Derek became, for a short time, a Hollywood A-lister because she wore her hair in cornrows in the movie 10. Forty years later, Black women are still often penalized professionally for the same hairstyle. And for the “both sides” idiots who insist on pointing out that Black women who straighten their hair are just as guilty of cultural appropriation: A) Straight hair is not an aspect of white culture, as anyone who has ever seen an Asian person knows. B) If natural Black hair on women were accepted in western culture, Black women wouldn’t have to straighten their hair or wear wigs that bring them closer to an acceptable (i.e., white) beauty standard.
I appreciate my husband for respecting Black people, Black culture, and his Black husband enough to decline the pleas of all those Black women that day. That said, I wouldn’t have been embarrassed or upset if he had gotten cornrows because Black women would have been doing the honors and getting paid for it. And although Jayden is not on social media, I know if he had posted pics on Instagram, he would have given credit where it was due — not to David Beckham, Justin Timberlake, or Justin Bieber.
But yes, all socio-political considerations aside, he averted a hair disaster that probably would have made him feel self-conscious for the rest of the cruise. I’d be lying if I said I’m not a little curious to see what my husband would look like with his hair braided, but I’ll be perfectly fine if I never find out.
This post originally appeared on Medium and is edited and republished with author's permission. Read more of Jeremy Heligar's work on Medium.