Stop talking about Black women’s hair
The cloud bob is the final straw
Stop talking about Black women’s hair
The latest internet spectator sport is talking about Black women, especially our hair.
STORY BY MELISSA SIGODO
APRIL 18, 2026
For what feels like an eternity, online discourse has been filled with opinions, advice and criticisms of Black women’s hair. But the straw that might break the camel’s back is a recent Vogue article “redefining” an Afro as a “cloud bob.” According to HelloBeautiful, the article featured the description which was used in a different article back in 2025 that had nothing to do with Afros. But for some reason, Vogue apparently decided to seemingly troll Black women by placing a picture of actress Tracee Ellis Ross alongside the label which has since been removed. But as I said, it’s been a long minute of Black women’s hair being made a point of discussion, but quite frankly, it needs to stop.
From Black women being accused of self-hate or poor hygiene for donning a wig or braids for long periods of time, the unsolicited comments telling us which hairstyle people prefer us to wear, podcasts featuring men telling us they love “their women” with natural hair, men telling us they don’t like “their women” with natural hair, the hard wig discourse around “soft life” aspirations, the braid-tucked-behind-the-ear discourse that apparently determines you’ll date white men, the podcasts and blogs exploiting vulnerable Black women for clicks about Fairy washing up liquid, the good hair, the bad hair, the bald and now a Vogue article “redefining” an Afro as a “cloud bob”. After all that has been said about us, I now have to ask, for the love of all things holy, can we stop talking about Black women’s hair.
Black women have been critiqued, objectified, fetishised and told how we should feel or behave and present ourselves as if we are property belonging to society. And now, via the internet, our worth is supposedly determined by anyone other than ourselves and instead, the beholder of our beauty is anybody on the internet with working phone camera and a social media account. And in the last few months, the discussions have been relentless and exasperating.
As much as I’ve tried to steer clear of this particularly nasty flavour of rage-bait content, the algorithm has ensured that it finds its way to me if only for a few seconds of angry engagement in the hopes of generating cash. Like the meme of football coach José Mourinho taking off his headphones, I promptly switch off in disgust, because as much as people don’t regard Black women as human, I am a Black woman looking to unwind on the internet after an exhausting day of living in this callous world, and instead, I am forced to feel this vitriol directly aimed at me.
I say this world is exhausting simply because we are not only navigating this hell online - we deal with people who hold these views on us in real life. Black women are the most disrespected people in the world and that’s no exaggeration. From having to brace ourselves for our colleagues reactions in the workplace when we get a new hairstyle, not having our edges “perfectly laid enough” to fit a certain beauty standard and being supposedly required to fulfil every man’s misogynistic “aesthetic preference” - the world is a pretty unhinged place for us. Our hair products aren’t even well regulated and end up either being counterfeit or toxic to our health. And yet, no other group is under as much scrutiny as we are and not only by our counterparts, but by each other.
And so, I have a request. I hope anyone reading will oblige. My request is for everyone to simply stop talking about our hair. To avoid that itch to start analysing the strands that go naturally out of our scalps or the ways we choose to maintain, cover or adapt them. To stop adding fuel to an already uncontrollable bin fire of isms where many keep their hands warm off our objectification. For a moment, can you imagine what could be achieved? If the world fell silent about us for a day or two? How we could doomscroll on social media without being verbally assaulted, how we could finally be the extraordinary girl bosses Emma Grede desperately wants us to be showing up as our real selves in the office without judgement, how Michelle Obama could have worn braids as the First Lady of America without feeling that her country wasn’t ready for it? The possibilities would be endless.
So, here’s the deal. We are not anyone’s property. The way we wear our hair is not up for debate. It is up to us and us alone. Our hair is not a talking point for clickbait. It is not your preference, and we are not objects floating emotionless through the air. We are human beings. Human beings who feel and deserve the freedom to say, stop talking about my hair.