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You know what they say: It doesn’t exist until white people say so.

Afros have been an African-American hairstyle since way back when. Now it’s a trend. Allure magazine decided to let you know that you (yes, you) can get an afro. It’s apparently a retro enough look to fit into the magazine’s “Retro Modern” feature. To prove this, the magazine used a white model — The Last Ship‘s Marissa Neitling — to do so. Mind you, Neitling normally looks like this:

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She seems very proud of that photoshoot, too.

Of course, many know cultural appropriation and caucasity when they see it. Allure was quickly taken to task.

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As you’d expect, Allure issued a statement (to BuzzFeed) that’s obligatory and stale rather than addressing the main issue here.

“The Afro has a rich cultural and aesthetic history,” the statement says. “In this story, we show women using different hairstyles as an individual expressions [sic] of style. Using beauty and hair as a form of self-expression is a mirror of what’s happening in our country today. The creativity is limitless—and pretty wonderful.”

Creativity is a helluva euphemism…

One Magazine Thought It Was Cool To Let A White Woman Model An Afro  was originally published on theurbandaily.com

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