Over the past few years, natural hair and prints inspired by the vast continent have been widely embraced in America. Afros, bantu knots, and curls are literally blossoming from the heads around us. Instead of mere attitude, we now carry something like...negritude.
Concurrently, the borders of race are continuing to blur and along with them, formerly distinct aspects of American culture. More aware of race as a social construction, some young Americans are rejecting prescribed roles (that to be black is to behave like x, and to be white is to behave like y) and instead, are asserting who they are and what they like by embracing eclectic interests (untethering these interests from the categories of race and class).
Now, fashionistas like Solange and Janelle Monae create pop art within a boundless context enriched by blackness---and it's anything but monolithic. As they've shown us, blackness is performative and almost always, beautiful.
Janelle Monae serves us androgyny:
Marie Claire 2011
Rihanna, the gamine:
Italian Vogue 2009
The earthy Esperanza Spalding:
These ladies demonstrate how limitless cultural identity can be.
Of course, such an increase in popularity is not without its drawbacks. I hope that one day, we will be as mainstream in the fashion world as we are in music, not treated as topical themes but as eternal muses.
