Singer Janelle Monae looks fab on the cover of Vibe Vixen. Love her hair. Looks as if she straightened it (a loose, unstructured pompadour is still there) and it's braided to the back. Don't you just love the versatility of natural hair?
No sooner than Janelle Monae strutted her natural pompadour across the stage at the BET Awards, comes news that the natural-haired singer is getting flack about wearing a long, wavy weave in her new video, Dance Apocalyptic.
Oh, boy.
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Calm down.
I love Monae's retro pompadour just as much as any other natural, but it's her hair. If she wants to rock a weave, who am I to say anything? I think her natural style makes her unique and stand out (the weave, not so much) but who am I to say anything about how she wears her hair?
I get it. We naturals want to represent. And where better to do that than in Hollywood? In fact, my posts about celebrities with natural hair are the highest-rated on this blog, consistently getting hits months and even years later. We want to know everything about the natural styles that celebs are wearing (even if they are wigs).
To Weave or not to Weave?
Maybe folks expected more, like a naturally kinky wig.
But that's their expectations. Some folks are already pointing the figure that Monae has changed her hairstyle due to her recent fame (she's a Cover Girl spokeswoman). And Black women in entertainment have this long, complicated and dysfunctional relationship with weave. Which I really don't feel like getting into.
Must Janelle wear the natural world on her shoulders? Can't she just change it up and be done with it? Or is hair not really hair? We say it, but I don't believe that ish for one minute, sometimes.
Janelle Monae -- Cover Girl's first model with natural hair? Source
R&B singer Janelle Monáe is the new spokesmodel for COVERGIRL.
Monáe will star in the makeup line's fall campaign and, perhaps, is the first openly natural Cover Girl model (I think Queen Latifah may be natural, but I'm not sure since she largely wears her hair straight).
COVERGIRL couldn't have picked a better spokesperson. With her trademark natural pompadour and uniquely styled black and white ensembles, the songstress encourages others to embrace their uniqueness.
"Becoming a COVERGIRL is truly an honor and a gift," said Monáe in a statement in Essence Magazine. "It opens up a new platform for me to inspire women to feel stronger, braver and more beautiful inside and out. One of my core values is to help redefine what it means to be a strong and beautiful woman in the music and fashion worlds and to empower the wonderful things that make us unique."
“I believe it’s time that women truly owned their superpowers and used their beauty and strength to change the world around them,” said Monáe.
