‘Allure’ magazine uses White woman in afro tutorial

Allure magazine, a beauty publication targeting young white women is under fire after featuring a white woman in an Afro tutorial.

The tutorial, which appeared in the magazine’s August 2015 issue features actress Marissa Neitling—a white woman with straight hair—and provides a step-by-step tutorial on how to wet, scrunch, twirl, diffuse and curl your straight hair in order to achieve the Afro look.

Not to our surprise, Black Twitter didn’t think it was appropriate that a white model was used for the tutorial of a hairstyle created by and indigenous to African Americans. Some argued that it reeked of cultural appropriation. To make matters worse, Allure got it wrong, since the do’ was in actuality a twist-out… not exactly an Afro.

“What a missed opportunity by @Allure_magazine to actually talk about afro hair…to girls who actually have it.” wrote one Twitter user.

“I see that @Allure_magazine is now jumping into the cultural appropriation game.If you need “steps”, it’s not a fro.” tweeted another…

But it didn’t stop there. Natural hair enthusiasts flooded Allure’s timeline with images of true afro’s, in all their glory. The mag later defended their tutorial in a statement to Buzzfeed saying…

“The Afro has a rich cultural and aesthetic history. 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.”