Vox: All Posts by Nadra Nittlehttps://cdn.vox-cdn.com/community_logos/52517/voxv.png2019-06-05T13:30:00-04:00https://www.vox.com/authors/nadra-nittle/rss2019-06-05T13:30:00-04:002019-06-05T13:30:00-04:00Lil Nas X isn’t an anomaly — black people have always been a part of country music
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<figcaption>Singer Lil Nas X performs onstage during the Stagecoach Music Festival on April 28, 2019, in Indio, California. | Scott Dudelson/Getty Images for Stagecoach</figcaption>
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<p>The myth of the all-white American West contributes to the erasure of black cowboys, musicians, and settlers. </p> <p id="jkQkGJ">When the writer and activist <a href="http://movies2.nytimes.com/books/98/03/29/specials/baldwin-dream.html">James Baldwin took part in a Cambridge University debate about America’s race problem</a> in 1965, he invoked the trope of the Western film to argue that the American dream had indeed come at black people’s expense. For all of their contributions to the United States, African Americans existed on society’s margins.</p>
<p id="R3KDtm">“It comes as a great shock around the age of 5 or 6 or 7 to discover that the flag to which you have pledged allegiance ... has not pledged allegiance to you,” he said. “It comes as a great shock to discover that Gary Cooper killing off the Indians, when you were rooting for Gary Cooper, that the Indians were<em> you</em>.”</p>
<p id="xUmiH4">The nearly all-white Cambridge audience chuckled at Baldwin’s recollection of this epiphany. They may have been English, but they viewed the “cowboy” to be white because American pop culture had made that idea global. More than 50 years later, that perception still holds. Most things country-and-western, including cowboys, music, and fashion, are widely linked to white men, from John Wayne to Johnny Cash. </p>
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<p id="C2Hy4P">No moment in recent memory demonstrates this quite like the debates sparked by the wildly successful single “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ysFgElQtjI">Old Town Road</a>,” recorded by African American rapper Lil Nas X, who describes the song as “<a href="http://time.com/5561466/lil-nas-x-old-town-road-billboard/">country-trap</a>.” In March, <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/4/5/18295966/old-town-road-lil-nas-x-billy-ray-cyrus-country-rap-debate">Billboard removed the track from the Hot Country chart</a> (where it had broken the Top 20), explaining that it had been a mistake to categorize it as country. </p>
<p id="uIjtli">This led Lil Nas X supporters to argue that Billboard’s move stemmed from either racial bias or bias against rap music. Country-pop songs have been staples on country charts for decades, but “country-trap,” “hick-hop,” and “hip-haw,” as rap-country blends have been nicknamed, have yet to become standard in the genre. Since some fans blame this on anti-blackness, Billboard’s decision to pull “Old Town Road” from the country charts has raised questions about the purpose of musical genres and the historic exclusion of African Americans from country music. </p>
<p id="47X7hB">“When one understands that ‘country’ music is a marketing genre and that black country people are a culture, one begins to peel away the layers of perception and the definitions of who should be playing a certain type of music and why,” Dom Flemons, the neotraditional country musician known as the <a href="https://theamericansongster.com/about/">American Songster</a>, told me. </p>
<p id="czKY3N">In late May, the debates about “Old Town Road” stretched beyond the music when <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/5/23/18636279/lil-nas-x-wrangler-collection-prices-backlash">Wrangler announced it was launching a Lil Nas X collection</a>. The news prompted some consumers to accuse the jeans company of <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/entertainthis/2019/05/23/wranglers-old-town-road-slammed-cowboy-cultural-appropriation/1214099001/">“taking the cowboy outta country”</a> and threaten a boycott. </p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">y’all really boycotting wrangler?? is it that deep </p>— nope (@LilNasX) <a href="https://twitter.com/LilNasX/status/1130634802825031681?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 21, 2019</a>
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<p id="7IuhGt">The fans who were angry that the company would team up with a rapper essentially characterized the pairing as “<a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/entertainthis/2019/05/23/wranglers-old-town-road-slammed-cowboy-cultural-appropriation/1214099001/">cultural appropriation</a>,” a charge that has generated outcry from African Americans who balk at the idea that cowboys or country music should be considered the sole provenance of white people. </p>
<p id="sTFyDQ">“The idea that Lil Nas X is perpetuating some form of cultural appropriation by recording and having success in the country genre is simply absurd,” pop culture commentator Jawn Murray told me. “How can you appropriate something you played a significant part in shaping?”</p>
<p id="704er0">Josh Garrett-Davis, the <a href="https://theautry.org/">Autry Museum of the West’s</a> Gamble associate curator of Western history, popular culture, and firearms, said the efforts to whitewash the country-and-western tradition go back years.</p>
<p id="DxOC8O">“There’s a lot of media, whether the classic cowboy paintings or the Wild West shows, that were all sort of reinforcing this idea that the cowboy hero is white,” he told me.</p>
<p id="ZgrwFM">The racial segregation of musical genres would also perpetuate the idea that African Americans played no role in country-and-western customs. Still, the black influence on these practices lives on through the black rodeo, the black musicians recording country music today, and the millions of African Americans who remain connected to their country roots. </p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">How we gonna appropriate shit Black folks created? <a href="https://t.co/JgdCMMq4Rq">https://t.co/JgdCMMq4Rq</a></p>— LeslieMac (@LeslieMac) <a href="https://twitter.com/LeslieMac/status/1132334590574641158?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 25, 2019</a>
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<p id="92ymhU"><a href="https://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/census_2000/cb01cn176.html">Fifty-four percent of African Americans live in the South</a>; that figure includes Lil Nas X, who hails from Atlanta. But many of the black people located elsewhere have close ties to the region too. I was born in Chicago to an African American mother from Jackson, Tennessee, the destination of my first plane flight. </p>
<p id="VYeD5m">By elementary school, I spent summers there with my aunts, uncles, and grandmother, who enjoyed canning and baking but could also handle a rifle, if need be. In fact, my grandmother took me on a wild quail hunt when I couldn’t have been older than a second-grader. Inevitably, I’d leave Tennessee with words like “yonder” and “reckon” in my vocabulary, much to the amusement of my Midwestern relatives when I returned to Illinois. </p>
<p id="jh5mYc">As an adult, I live in Los Angeles, but the influence of the South on my early years hasn’t vanished. It’s why I gravitate to Southern gothic films like <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119080/"><em>Eve’s Bayou</em></a>, why the last book I finished was <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Secret-History-Memphis-Hoodoo-Rootworkers-ebook/dp/B01N371QHN#customerReviews"><em>A Secret History of Memphis Hoodoo</em></a>, and why I’ll randomly call my mother to verify whether I went to <a href="https://www.dollywood.com/">Dollywood</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opryland_USA">Opryland</a>, or both one childhood summer. While I don’t own Wranglers, I have cowboy boots from Tony Lama, Frye, and Tecovas — symbols of the four years I spent living in New Mexico and Texas during the aughts. </p>
<p id="R07HVf">The high concentration of African Americans in the South, largely the legacy of slavery, means the disputes that have surfaced in the wake of “Old Town Road’s” success are about much more than cowboys and country music. The narrow framing of the African American identity as urban and the erasure of black people from the American mythos lie at the core of these controversies. By rejecting the notion that country-and-western culture is wholly white, black people aren’t just pushing for historical accuracy but demanding — as Baldwin did decades ago — to be acknowledged as authentically American.</p>
<h3 id="Dav7v0"><strong>The dialogue about black people in country music isn’t new</strong></h3>
<p id="iKnVBF">Charles L. Hughes, author of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Country-Soul-Making-Music-American/dp/1469633426"><em>Country Soul: Making Music and Making Race in the American South</em></a>, said that country music has long struggled with its relationships to blackness and black musicians. Also director of the Lynne and Henry Turley Memphis Center at <a href="https://www.rhodes.edu/">Rhodes College</a> in Memphis, Hughes said that black music history has shaped country music nonetheless.</p>
<p id="ZRFpNQ">“But the space for black artists has been very limited,” he told me. “Black musicians have been very marginalized. I think the reason this [‘Old Town Road’ debate] has become such a massive cultural moment is that our understanding of rural comes from country music, even though African American folks have long been a central part of the story.”</p>
<p id="B6XACG">Even a superstar like Beyoncé faced barriers when she tried to go country. In 2016, the <a href="https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/grammys/7604485/beyonce-daddy-lessons-rejected-grammy-country-committee">Grammys rejected her song “Daddy Lessons,”</a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jj1T7uHdBcY">featuring the Dixie Chicks</a>, for consideration in the country category although it included guitars, a banjo, and horns — for a Zydeco twist. And when she performed the song at the 2016 Country Music Awards, some country music fans lashed out. Wrote one <a href="https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/la-et-ms-conservative-cma-beyonce-dixie-chicks-20161103-htmlstory.html">CMA viewer of Beyoncé</a>, “SHE DOES NOT BELONG!!!! When have they ever invited ANY country singer to their BET awards...NEVER!!!!STOP IT.”</p>
<p id="kgNzUk">Another viewer <a href="https://twitter.com/blp3/status/793998947434004480">demanded a boycott of the CMAs, lest Beyoncé</a> “ruin our music,” to which another responded, “‘your music’? you mad and don’t even know the history of country music.”</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">"your music"? You mad and don't even know the history of country music.</p>— козырь - это мусор (@siditty) <a href="https://twitter.com/siditty/status/794174452099469312?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 3, 2016</a>
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<p id="ZZZHen">That history includes the banjo, a country music staple that likely evolved from a <a href="https://www.npr.org/2011/08/23/139880625/the-banjos-roots-reconsidered">three-stringed West African instrument known as the akonting</a>. Prohibited from playing the drums, which they could use to send messages to each other, enslaved Africans in the US perfected their <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/rapper-destroys-dude-in-old-town-road-country-chart-debate_n_5ce2cf4ce4b075a35a2b5a91">banjo skills and also thrived as fiddle and harmonica players</a>. In the 1920s, these black musicians played blues songs for African American audiences and folk songs for white listeners. Their tweaks to the blues ultimately gave rise to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/11/03/think-beyonce-doesnt-belong-at-the-cmas-you-dont-know-country/?utm_term=.e8f67143f996">bluegrass and western swing, which became country-and-western</a>. </p>
<p id="jtlFUc">Racial segregation in the music business has muted this history. The tunes black people recorded were classified as “race music” and separated from country-and-western.</p>
<p id="ct2wND">“It’s really a result of the way the recording industry in the early 20th century developed this idea of musical genres,” Hughes said. “The categories would be defined by race or ethnicity. They [record executives] wanted to be able to sell records to a particular market, so the string band traditions were moved to the category of hillbilly music, which later became country, and sold to white audiences. The gospel and the blues were sold to black audiences.”</p>
<p id="ovDdAs">Although these genre divides were arbitrary, they changed the once flexible nature of Southern music, according to Grammy-winning musician Flemons. Artists began to record music in ways that easily lent themselves to classification, and after World War II, “race” music and “hillbilly” became “rhythm and blues” and “country and western,” respectively. </p>
<p id="j61Jou">“This is the main reason most people would never associate black music and country music as having the same root,” Flemons explained. “This does not mean that black audiences do not know or like country music.”</p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"><aside id="Zfbp2J"><q>“How can you appropriate something you played a significant part in shaping?”</q></aside></div>
<p id="tdfgkH">A 2018 CBS News poll of 1,009 people found that <a href="http://docs.cbsnews.com/17/pdfs/CBS%20News%20Poll_012818_Music.pdf">7 percent of African Americans consider country to be their favorite genre</a>, roughly the same percentage who listed rock, rap, or classical as their preferred form of music. R&B was the most popular among black survey respondents, with 39 percent identifying it as their top musical style. By comparison, 26 percent of white respondents listed country as their favorite, edging out all other categories.</p>
<p id="cPZBSz">My mother is a black country music fan. While reporting this story, I phoned her to confirm her favorite country artists — Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, Kris Kristofferson, Kenny Rogers, Crystal Gayle, Glenn Campbell. The conversation took a turn when she recalled asking my grandmother, her mother, if she was familiar with <a href="https://www.history-of-rock.com/perkins.htm">Carl Perkins’s music</a>. He was the rockabilly pioneer who influenced the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bm5HKlQ6nGM">Elvis Presley, who famously covered</a> his “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRNyvO4QouY">Blue Suede Shoes</a>.” My grandmother quipped that of course she knew Perkins’s music; she’d grown up with the man.</p>
<p id="f0Lo1E">Although Perkins was white and my grandmother was black, they were both the children of struggling Tennessee sharecroppers, a population among which the racial divides of the Jim Crow South weren’t as fixed. After his rise to stardom, Perkins discussed how an elderly black field worker named John Westbrook taught him guitar. His story isn’t an anomaly.</p>
<p id="pxIwYc">“There’s a laundry list of black background vocalists and musicians who have recorded and toured with white country superstars,” Murray, the pop culture commentator, told me, “giving them that authentic bluesy-soul that has helped translate their country records into megahits.”</p>
<p id="AvIrNL">The marketing of country as “the music of white America” may have cemented the idea in the public imagination that African Americans had little to do with the art form, but it didn’t stop African American artists such as <a href="https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/country/7624390/ray-charles-pointer-sisters-beyonce-country-grammys">Ray Charles, Charley Pride, Big Bill Broonzy, the Pointer Sisters</a>, and <a href="https://nmaam.org/2018/07/10/profile-linda-martell/">Linda Martell</a> from performing country. </p>
<p id="tqNJdt">Today, African American artists continue to leave their mark on the music, especially Darius Rucker, one of three black men, along with DeFord Bailey and Charley Pride, to be named a Grand Ole Opry member. An eclectic mix of black artists, including <a href="https://people.com/country/jimmie-allen-catches-feelings-first-relationships/">Jimmie Allen</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mS3TeZEp_PE">Kane Brown</a>, <a href="http://www.carolinachocolatedrops.com/">the Carolina Chocolate Drops</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7omTUQUTFvo">Mickey Guyton</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/cowboytroy/">Cowboy Troy</a>, and Flemons are also thriving in the country and folk music scene. Cowboy Troy is a country rapper, but he certainly hasn’t made the splash that Lil Nas X has.</p>
<p id="2geOih">Flemons, who last year released the album <a href="https://domflemons.bandcamp.com/album/black-cowboys"><em>Black Cowboys</em></a>, said he’s always used his music to blur the lines between genres. </p>
<p id="mN9o4b">“As a 21st-century musician, I have not found a need to limit my interests or my music to arbitrary lines set 100 years ago,” he said. </p>
<h3 id="4MNsCX"><strong>African Americans played crucial roles in the Old West</strong></h3>
<p id="9kstti">Just as country music has never been an exclusively white art form, the Old West itself was never solely white. Scores of indigenous peoples lived on the land before anyone of European descent set foot in the region. Moreover, people of color played important roles in Lewis and Clark’s two-year expedition to explore the West in the early 1800s. Without the help of <a href="https://www.biography.com/explorer/sacagawea">Sacagawea</a>, the enslaved Shoshone woman who translated for Lewis and Clark and knew which foods to eat and the layout of some of the land to be explored, the expedition may have ended in failure. <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/york-explored-west-lewis-and-clark-his-freedom-wouldnt-come-until-decades-later-180968427/">York, the black man William Clark enslaved</a>, also helped the expedition succeed. As with many African Americans who ventured West, however, York’s contributions were often omitted from history books.</p>
<p id="HkgdWY">“One of the missions of the Autry Museum is to expand that often narrow or mythic perception people have of the American West,” Carolyn Brucken, the Autry’s chief curator and director of research, told me. “You can’t talk about the beginning of the American West without talking about African Americans and Native Americans.”</p>
<p id="AYScqQ">In Texas, many black men became skilled cowhands when white ranchers left their land and cattle behind to fight in the Civil War. When enslaved black people won their freedom, the ranchers hired them to be ranch hands and cowhands, or “cowboys.” Brucken estimates that at least one out of four cowboys was a black man. </p>
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<cite>Autry Museum</cite>
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<em>The Bull Dogger</em> (1923) movie poster, Norman Film Manufacturing Company, 1925. Lithograph. </figcaption>
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<p id="arnxmn">Photographs of 19th-century cowboys reveal pride on their faces and self-expression in their choice of clothing, Brucken said. They mostly wore functional apparel that allowed them to tend to cattle. “At the same time, you can see rodeo performers modifying them into an early version of the street style look,” she said. “They decorated their chaps, and by the early 20th century, they were influencing one of the first subcultures, railroad workers, who started imitating how they dressed.”</p>
<p id="EHznHG">Since African Americans made up a significant percentage of cowboys, Brucken says they have just as much right to country-and-western culture, including the clothes and music, as anyone. But while black filmmakers such as Oscar Micheaux, Fred Williamson, and Mario Van Peebles depicted the experiences of African Americans in the West in films like <em>The Homesteader</em>, <em>Adios Amigo</em>, and <em>Posse</em>, most major Western films left out the experiences of African Americans. </p>
<p id="VbVYJY">“Is it white centrality or white supremacy?” Garrett-Davis, also of the Autry Museum, asked about the role of whiteness in the Western. He’s unsure whether Westerns alone are responsible for the racial myths about the cowboy. “I don’t know that they’re only to blame, but they are to blame to a degree. If they weren’t challenging American race relations, they were complicit.”</p>
<h3 id="q4wadb"><strong>The black rodeo tradition continues to thrive</strong></h3>
<p id="MxjHDs">Black rodeos across the country work to dispel the notion that there were no black cowboys. For 35 years, the traveling <a href="http://www.billpickettrodeo.com/">Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo</a> (BPIR) has paid tribute to the “forgotten cowboys of color.” Started in Denver in 1984 by <a href="https://www.denverpost.com/2015/05/17/lu-vason-creator-of-all-black-bill-pickett-rodeo-dies-at-76/">music promoter Lu Vason</a>, the rodeo is named after Bill Pickett. Born in Texas in 1870, Pickett was a Wild West show performer and actor who invented the rodeo event known as bulldogging, or steer wrestling. Bulldogging is still practiced today, but the name <a href="http://www.prorodeohalloffame.com/inductees/by-category/steer-wrestling/bill-pickett/">Bill Pickett</a> often elicits blank stares from the public, according to BPIR president Valeria Howard-Cunningham.</p>
<p id="pLG1j8">“I’m not sure before we started the rodeo how many people knew about Bill Pickett,” she told me. “You know, being a person in the Wild West, he was the first black actor in a Western show. Some people — they don’t know anything about rodeo or black rodeo. It’s just not something they’re interested in.”</p>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/JZ8yMjtUWSU6QZoDignLsj04feE=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/16321981/unnamed__3_.jpg">
<cite>Nate Trang</cite>
<figcaption>Ramontay McConnell, a 23-year-old rodeo competitor.</figcaption>
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<p id="q4MmlP">The <a href="https://azblackrodeo.wixsite.com/azbr/">Arizona Black Rodeo</a> in Phoenix, which began about 15 years ago, also educates the public about the black presence on the frontier. It includes events such as bronco busting, steer and calf roping, bull riding, and women’s barrel races. Black women such as <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/obituaries/mary-ellen-pleasant-overlooked.html">Mary Ellen Pleasant</a>, <a href="http://www.womenhistoryblog.com/2013/05/biddy-mason.html">Biddy Mason</a>, and <a href="https://www.history.com/news/meet-stagecoach-mary-the-daring-black-pioneer-who-protected-wild-west-stagecoaches">Stagecoach Mary Fields</a> were not cowgirls, per se, but they are Western legends just like cowboys Bill Pickett and <a href="https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/natlove/summary.html">Nat Love</a> are. </p>
<p id="arF0Ty">“We can incorporate how important the black cowboy was to American history,” Cloves Campbell, Arizona Black Rodeo’s coordinator, told me. “You’ll see cowboys dressed up in certain outfits to show the history of the cowboy, the Buffalo soldiers, and their contributions to the West.”</p>
<p id="zyBueH">Today, some African Americans still identify as cowboys. Rodeo competitor and horseman Ramontay McConnell is one of them. The 23-year-old leads trainings and clinics on roping and reining horses, agility exercises, and cow pinning. When he steps out in Portland with muddy boots, a cowboy hat, and a horse, he definitely turns heads, he told me. </p>
<p id="D347Zz">For the most part, people respond positively to the sight of a black cowboy. While McConnell often dresses the part, other times he mounts his horse in athletic wear. </p>
<p id="FTEpKH">“Wearing boots and jeans doesn’t make a cowboy a cowboy,” he said. “People think a cowboy is the Marlboro Man chewing tobacco or smoking cigarettes on a horse.”</p>
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<cite>Scott Olson/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Lindon Demery waits for the start of competition and his turn in the junior barrel racing event at the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo on April 1, 2017, in Memphis.</figcaption>
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<p id="o90Qon">This is also why McConnell, a country music fan, said he considers the backlash Wrangler has faced for collaborating with Lil Nas X to be “nonsense.” He believes the time has come to expand the cowboy’s image. </p>
<p id="W5XEQQ">Flemons said the Lil Nas X debate extends beyond cowboys to all the African Americans who headed West to achieve the American dream. Since black people are typically associated with urban environments — although <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/10/trump-african-american-inner-city/503744/">most do not live in inner cities</a> — their legitimacy as country people isn’t universally accepted. </p>
<p id="37gHOu">That “Old Town Road” has broken streaming records and won support from none other than country giant Billy Ray Cyrus, featured on the remix, signals that there’s more interest in the black-and-country perspective than entertainment industry executives likely realized. </p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="iqJ4lT">“This is what makes the controversy over ‘Old Town Road’ so interesting to me as a historian,” Flemons said. “[Lil Nas X] has decided to reference black rural culture and black cowboys in the form of popular music, and it is not only being celebrated by the audience; it is being demanded.”</p>
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https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/6/5/18653880/lil-nas-x-country-music-billboard-wrangler-old-town-roadNadra Nittle2019-05-07T09:00:00-04:002019-05-07T09:00:00-04:00A high school’s dress code for parents sparked backlash. The principal is standing by it.
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<img alt="A mother and child stand together outside a school building." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/yL6ONsUHCo6Jd3qL7awm_PpeQc4=/0x0:5120x3840/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/63743917/GettyImages_505638331.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>In an April 9 letter, James Madison High School’s administration banned parents from wearing clothes like ripped jeans, leggings, and bonnets. | Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>Critics say the code smacks of respectability politics. </p> <p id="ZHWViC">James Madison High School’s dress code for parents sparked a huge backlash after it was announced in April, but the principal of the Houston school is standing by the controversial policy. </p>
<p id="jnPR4S"><a href="https://docs.google.com/viewerng/viewer?url=https://www.houstonisd.org//cms/lib2/TX01001591/Centricity/Domain/22431/Dress+Code.pdf">Announced in an April 9 letter, the dress code</a> bars parents from visiting Madison High wearing ripped jeans, leggings, short-shorts, mini dresses, or tops that expose cleavage. A number of other items, including hair bonnets, rollers, and pajama pants, have been banned as well.</p>
<p id="1y5iXz">In a statement to Vox, Principal Carlotta Outley Brown said she was compelled to implement the policy after one parent visited campus in a sheer top that exposed her breasts and a second walked in wearing low-cut jeans that exposed thong underwear. After a third parent arrived to school “in her night shirt and a cloth head wrap with rollers in her hair and flip flops,” Brown said that she decided to implement the dress code that had been in place at a previous school she led for 15 years. </p>
<p id="3emDh5">The policy there never became headline news, and Brown said that it has only attracted media attention now because a parent told the press she had been ousted from campus because of her attire. The principal said that staff tried to help the parent but did not want her walking the halls in a shirt that “you could clearly see through.”</p>
<p id="yifIXy">After this dispute, Brown explained in a schoolwide letter that she was implementing the parent dress code to help children understand the appropriate clothing to wear outside the home. The <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/04/24/high-schools-new-dress-code-bans-leggings-pajamas-silk-bonnets-parents/?utm_term=.c9f2f6d715cd">dress code has been criticized</a>, including by Houston-area officials, for being racist and classist, as obscene clothing does not appear to be the sole focus. Madison High School serves mostly low-income families of color, and some of the items on the banned list, such as hair bonnets, disproportionately target black women’s grooming practices. But Brown denied that the policy had any racist or classist intent.</p>
<p id="7EyecJ">“This is not about race, creed, or color and especially not about socio-economic status,” she said. “It is about elevating standards for students who will go out into the world in the near future and seek opportunities for themselves. I do not want them to face possible barriers.”</p>
<p id="LqthdH">Critics of the dress code say that <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/houston-school-s-dress-code-parents-teaches-kids-sexism-elitism-ncna998296">the lingering effects of “respectability” politics</a> may be the driving force behind it. These politics suggest that if black people look, speak, or behave in ways that line up with white middle-class values, they can somehow elude racial bigotry. But the new dress code also reveals how out of touch Madison High’s administrators may be with current trends in education. After all, the administration is policing how parents and students look during a time when the nation’s most progressive school districts have determined that <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/9/13/17847542/students-waging-war-sexist-racist-school-dress-codes">dress codes enforce outdated race, sex, and class norms</a>. It has also likely alienated families when administrators across the country are <a href="https://districtadministration.com/teacher-home-visits-dropout-prevention/">boosting parent outreach to lower student dropout rates</a>. </p>
<h3 id="EZjrv2">Madison High’s dress code is more of the same institutional oppression </h3>
<p id="H25Kub">The <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/houston-school-s-dress-code-parents-teaches-kids-sexism-elitism-ncna998296">Madison High dress code is sparking debate</a> because it targets parents and students alike. Beyond that, it doesn’t particularly stand out for its specific policies; nearly all of the items the school now bans have appeared on dress code lists for decades. The 1965 student handbook from Broward Senior High School in Hollywood, Florida, barred “<a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/dress-codes-and-etiquette-part-1-what-not-to-wear-to-high-school-in-the-1960s-74464285/">hair scarves, curlers, clips or other hair setting paraphernalia</a>.” The school dress codes of yesteryear also singled out torn clothing, short skirts, and athletic wear as no-nos, which undercuts the idea that students and parents today simply don’t know what constitutes appropriate school attire. </p>
<p id="5EoFf5">In the United States, <a href="https://www.racked.com/2017/5/25/15685456/hair-policing-schools-braids-afros">families and schools have clashed over dress since at least the 1800s</a>. And the earliest dress codes served little purpose other than forcing black and Native American students to racially assimilate. More than a century ago, schools with majority black and brown students prohibited ethnic dress, long hair on boys, bright colors, jewelry, and sensuous fabrics, lest their “primitive” nature emerge. </p>
<aside id="pgTR3l"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Students are waging war on sexist and racist school dress codes — and they’re winning ","url":"https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/9/13/17847542/students-waging-war-sexist-racist-school-dress-codes"}]}'></div></aside><p id="HmjoyL">Dress codes have also traditionally targeted girls and gender nonconforming students of all backgrounds. With the exception of men’s undershirts, nearly every item Madison High School has banned is associated with girls and women, which means the code plays into the historic framing of women’s bodies as distractions to men. Black girls and women are particularly vulnerable to such characterizations: According to the <a href="https://nwlc-ciw49tixgw5lbab.stackpathdns.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/5.1web_Final_nwlc_DressCodeReport.pdf">National Women’s Law Center 2018 “Dress Coded” report</a>, the bodies, hair, and hair accessories of black women are most likely to be scrutinized. </p>
<p id="q90UPM">Increasingly, parents of black students have fought back against dress code politics. Last year, Nicole Williams publicly objected when school officials <a href="https://www.racked.com/2018/7/2/17519874/dress-code-duct-tape-enforcement-violation">duct-taped her seventh-grader’s skin to hide the flesh exposed by her ripped jeans</a>, and the parents of twin sisters Mya and Deanna Cook defended their daughters when a Boston-area charter school disciplined them in 2017 for wearing braided hair extensions. Given how often students and parents are appearing in the news to criticize dress codes, one wonders why Madison High decided that policing what entire families wear to school was a good idea. </p>
<p id="27lPLm">Instead of withdrawing the new policy, however, Principal Brown has doubled down on it. As she explained to Vox, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRh0zIc0LUA&feature=youtu.be">she told radio station 97.9 The Box</a> last week that she implemented the code because parents had shown up to the school dressed indecently. She also noted how her upbringing as the daughter of a teacher and military colonel shaped her views on dress. </p>
<p id="ozCwIn">“My mother told me to never go outside the home looking like you’re in the home, like you’ve gotten out of bed,” she said. “You go out and you look presentable.” Along with the idea that “<a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2013/05/19/remarks-president-morehouse-college-commencement-ceremony">as an African American, you have to work twice as hard as anyone else</a>,” as former President Barack Obama has told black students, the idea of looking presentable to gain social acceptance is old hat to African Americans, many of whom grow up scrutinized for how they look in ways that white people simply are not. Slain black teenager <a href="https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-xpm-2012-mar-23-la-na-nn-geraldo-rivera-hoodie-trayvon-martin-20120323-story.html">Trayvon Martin, for example, was implicated in his own killing for wearing a hoodie</a> in the rain.</p>
<aside id="wZEMHI"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"It’s Time to Stop Hair-Policing Children of Color","url":"https://www.racked.com/2017/5/25/15685456/hair-policing-schools-braids-afros"}]}'></div></aside><p id="06Xd0H">During The Box interview, the principal acknowledged implementing the same dress code at a different school, but she did not accuse the parents there of dressing obscenely. Rather, she expressed her belief that the path to a college education “starts with how we present ourselves.” Yet, the research on dropout rates is clear: The more <a href="https://www.waterford.org/education/how-parent-involvment-leads-to-student-success/">parents are involved in school</a>, the greater the odds their children will graduate. Suggesting that parents must fit a preconceived idea of “presentable” to set foot on campus is unlikely to shore up enough goodwill to incline families to spend any more time at Madison High than necessary, if at all. As it is, <a href="https://www.childtrends.org/indicators/parental-involvement-in-schools">schools that serve predominantly low-income families have lower rates of parent engagement</a> since it’s tough to turn up to PTA meetings while juggling jobs, transportation, and childcare. With its dress code, Madison High has, perhaps, given its parents another hurdle to cross.</p>
<p id="mmvcfm">But Brown has a different view. She told Vox, “I am not asking them to dress up; just come in a presentable manner and not night clothing or inappropriate clothing.” She said that parents can dress how they like in the carpool line, but to step onto school grounds, they need to be dressed appropriately. She added that she wants families to care as much about their children’s academic performance as they do about this new dress code. </p>
<h3 id="kqvHkT">Respectability politics influence dress codes and perceptions of black students </h3>
<p id="7Z3y2I">Much of what Brown has said about dress codes is wrapped up in old-school respectability politics. African Americans as varied as <a href="http://btwsociety.org/education/library/books/Character_Building/32.php">Booker T. Washington</a>, <a href="https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1998-02-08-1998039002-story.html">Madam CJ Walker</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/13/fashion/mens-style/miles-davis-style-icon.html">Miles Davis</a>, and even <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/beauty/people/no-jeans-but-lots-of-jokes-princes-hairdresser-on-working-with-t/">Prince</a> believed that how black people carried themselves in public mattered a great deal. Looking good, they believed, challenged white supremacist ideas about black people’s character. Appearing well-groomed and well-dressed countered the idea that black people were less capable, less attractive, or even less moral than white people. </p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">I ain't here for the "Dropping your kids off in a bonnet is bad parenting" hot takes. Is the child fed, clothed & cared for? Great. That's the priority. Not your randomly applied respectability politics.</p>— ❄Mikki Kendall❄ (@Karnythia) <a href="https://twitter.com/Karnythia/status/1121049149758218241?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 24, 2019</a>
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<p id="Bivv0i">A’Lelia Bundles, Madam CJ Walker’s biographer and great-great-granddaughter, wrote that when the businesswoman first started her groundbreaking hair company in the early 1900s, <a href="https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1998-02-08-1998039002-story.html">black women had little choice but to follow white beauty and apparel standards</a>. </p>
<p id="8ADyop">“It was an age when the morals of even the most respectable black women were questioned and sullied by racist stereotypes,” Bundles wrote. “As a result, middle-class black women in particular placed tremendous pressure on themselves to conform to Victorian behavior and dress.”</p>
<p id="XSwrKM">Black men haven’t been immune to this pressure. The late jazz trumpeter <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/13/fashion/mens-style/miles-davis-style-icon.html">Davis, born in 1926, dressed in fashionable suits and designer clothes</a> not only because he enjoyed style but also because he wanted to be taken seriously as a musician. </p>
<p id="eklDFv">“He was conscious that people were looking at him,” his bandmate Marcus Miller told the New York Times in 2016. “And the clothes were so important back then, particularly in the ’40s and ’50s, because this was an era when black artists were fighting to be recognized as more than simple entertainers. It was like, ‘We’re going to be as sharp as possible and we’re going to command respect.’”</p>
<p id="xizwRM">Looking dapper did not help <a href="https://todayinclh.com/?event=jazz-great-miles-davis-beaten-by-nyc-police">Davis in 1959, when New York police ordered him off a sidewalk</a> in front of a jazz club where he was rehearsing. Davis tried to explain his role at the club, but the exchange ended with police beating him. He was a well dressed, college-educated black man from an upper-middle-class family, but respectability politics did little good. </p>
<p id="LifOKf">The idea that dressing a certain way will help African Americans transcend racism has persisted for generations, in spite of the fact that it is just not true. If anything, respectability politics are a form of victim-blaming that hold the marginalized accountable for the ill treatment they receive rather than institutional forms of oppression that devalue some people and exalt others. Given how they unevenly target certain families along class, gender, and racial lines, restrictive dress codes are tools of such oppression. </p>
<h3 id="yu0VLS">Students and their families shouldn’t have to prove themselves worthy of respect</h3>
<p id="wghzDc">Students and parents don’t show up to school to prove they’re worthy of equal treatment, and neither need to make a point to dress well to receive a public education. Principal Brown suggested that parents need to be examples for children by showing them what’s acceptable to wear in a professional setting. But as Lisa Frack, the president of <a href="https://noworegon.org/">Oregon’s National Organization for Women</a>, pointed out to Vox in September, not every child is going to work in a bank or a law office. Some may be artists, auto mechanics, work from home, or end up living in a country like <a href="https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/fashion-luxury/article/1940047/chinese-street-style-elite-pyjamas-are-having-fashion">China, where pajamas in public are completely common</a>. </p>
<p id="oNrLzO">In 2015, Oregon NOW devised a “<a href="https://www.opb.org/radio/programs/thinkoutloud/segment/oregon-model-dress-code-portland-public-schools/">model dress code</a>” to prevent discrimination and disruption. It allows short-shorts, tank tops, leggings, and other items schools have banned. The dress code has been adopted by schools across the country with no reported upticks in misbehavior or other problems. It turns out that what students wear doesn’t hinder their ability to learn.</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="avVdpG">Moreover, how parents dress doesn’t make them good or bad examples for their children. Instead of applauding adults for taking an active role in their children’s education, the school’s policies shame them using the very same tactics that have repressed young people and their families for generations. By focusing on appearance, the administration has forgotten what matters most: that students and parents are showing up to school at all.</p>
<p id="e9RoFf"><em>Want more stories from The Goods by Vox? </em><a href="http://vox.com/goods-newsletter"><em><strong>Sign up for our newsletter here.</strong></em></a></p>
https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/5/7/18532416/james-madison-high-school-dress-codeNadra Nittle2019-02-15T16:00:00-05:002019-02-15T16:00:00-05:00Netflix’s Siempre Bruja centers a powerful black witch, for once
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<img alt="Siempre Bruja stars Angely Gaviria" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/jteMvDUT6kurmFkp7swqhJ5yXHE=/341x0:1024x512/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/63060939/siempre_bruja.0.jpg" />
<figcaption><em>Siempre Bruja</em> stars Angely Gaviria as Carmen Eguiluz, a powerful Afro-Colombian witch. | Netflix</figcaption>
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<p>The new fictional series shows that black witches can be human, powerful, and the stars of their own stories.</p> <p id="D13AFp">As her friend lies comatose in a hospital bed, Carmen Eguiluz orders the young woman to wake up, her voice louder with each command. Eyes closed and face clenched, Carmen rises toward the ceiling, hovering in the air until her incantation rouses her friend. The other visitors in the room look on in stunned silence: They’ve never witnessed such a scene before. And while viewers of Netflix’s new series <a href="https://www.netflix.com/title/80205595"><em>Siempre Bruja</em></a> (<em>Always a Witch</em>) have surely seen lots of cinematic magic, watching a black woman perform it may be a novel experience for them too. </p>
<p id="Eey6bp">Witchcraft is a well that Hollywood keeps returning to, whether it’s for movies or TV shows. Last month, news broke that <a href="https://variety.com/2019/film/news/anne-hathaway-the-witches-robert-zemeckis-1203109856/">Anne Hathaway would star in a remake of 1990’s <em>The Witches</em></a>. The fall television season saw the debuts of <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/10/11/17960550/new-fall-tv-shows-all-american-charmed-camping-jennifer-garner">The CW’s<em> Charmed</em></a> reboot and <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/10/30/18020046/netflix-chilling-adventures-sabrina-witch-fantasy">Netflix’s <em>The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina</em></a>. On FX’s <em>American Horror Story</em>, Sarah Paulson and her coven returned to battle the Antichrist in <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/10/24/18014670/american-horror-story-antichrist-michael-langdon-makeup"><em>Apocalypse</em></a>. Except for <em>Charmed</em>, however, none of these vehicles star women of color as leads.</p>
<p id="ARlOAN">With Dago García (<a href="https://play.caracoltv.com/telenovelas/pedro-el-escamoso"><em>Pedro el escamoso</em></a>, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1815687/"><em>El Paseo</em></a>) as executive producer, <em>Siempre Bruja</em> stands out for centering, and humanizing, a black witch. Inspired by Isidora Chacón’s 2015<strong> </strong>novel <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Yo-bruja-Isidora-Chac%C3%B3n-%C3%81lvarez/dp/8491040455"><em>Yo, Bruja</em></a>, the series kicks off in 17th-century Cartagena, Colombia, with an enslaved Carmen (Angely Gaviria) time-traveling to the city in the present to avoid being burned at the stake for practicing magic. The hoverboards, mobile phones, and cars of the modern world baffle her, but she doesn’t plan to stick around for long. </p>
<div id="5975Aw"><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 0; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.2493%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/EpP3Al2GaB8?rel=0" style="border: 0; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute;" allowfullscreen="" scrolling="no" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media"></iframe></div></div>
<p id="yvDG6i">The 19-year-old witch is in 2019 Cartagena to fulfill a promise to Aldemar (Luis Fernando Hoyos), the wizard who gave her the time-bending spell. In exchange for him helping her escape to the future, she’s agreed to deliver an enchanted stone to a witch working as a college professor. Although Carmen gets the job done, the professor disappears before performing the ritual that will send her back to 1646. Despite the threat to her own life in the past, Carmen desperately wants to return to save her boyfriend Cristóbal (Lenard Vanderaa), who was shot by his father for trying to stop her would-be execution. Cristóbal’s parents own Carmen, and his mother accused the enslaved woman of bewitching him. </p>
<p id="NQJ1al">This is a complicated start to a show that’s equal parts fantasy and telenovela. But <em>Siempre Bruja</em> is unique in that the black witch doesn’t sow discord or merely exist on the margins; she’s the main attraction — the most powerful witch in a long line of them. Actress Angely Gaviria deftly inhabits the role of Carmen, and she’s surrounded by a capable cast of supporting characters who, for the most part, aren’t threatened by her practice of brujeria. Filmed in lush locations around Colombia, <em>Siempre Bruja</em> reframes Hollywood’s often limited takes on the occult in which the heroines are white, magic is alienating, and witchcraft clashes with other faith traditions. </p>
<h3 id="vpFik0">
<em>Siempre Bruja’s</em> Carmen departs from Hollywood’s depictions of black witches </h3>
<p id="MmcgIL">Carmen Eguiluz is one of the most complicated black witches to grace the screen. She’s a young woman, still growing accustomed to her powers, but she’s also formidable. She has a strong sense of integrity but sometimes interferes in other people’s lives in ways that worsen their problems. In short, Carmen may be a powerful witch, but she’s still a human being. Many of the black witches in Hollywood who’ve preceded her, however, haven’t been quite so three-dimensional. They’re either on the sidelines, helping white witches fulfill their destinies, or evil voodoo queens straight from central casting. </p>
<p id="EZ6ct2">Dinah Stevens (Adina Porter), a voodoo priestess on <em>American Horror Story: Apocalypse</em> is an example of this trope. Wicked and self-serving, she’s willing to do the Antichrist’s bidding, despite his mission to destroy the world. Although Prudence Night (Tati Gabrielle) of the <em>Chilling Adventures of Sabrina</em> is given far more complexity than Dinah, she spends several episodes being a mean girl for the hell of it. And neither Prudence nor Dinah is as powerful as the white woman she challenges.</p>
<p id="svFga9">Discussing the <a href="https://www.vulture.com/2017/10/black-witches-why-cant-they-get-respect-in-pop-culture.html">(mis)representation of black witches in popular culture</a> in 2017, Vulture critic Angelica Jade Bastién wrote, “The lack of powerful black witches in film and TV is a symptom of a larger problem that has existed in America since its very beginning: the fear of black women’s autonomy and prowess.”</p>
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<img alt="Carmen Eguiluz (Angely Gaviria) levitating in Netlfix’s Siempre Bruja." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/XBbKmzMGq96dA3j36qrogNRp9c0=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/13760065/SiempreBrujalevitating.jpg">
<cite>Netflix</cite>
<figcaption>Carmen Eguiluz (Angely Gaviria) levitates as she sleeps in Netlfix’s <em>Siempre Bruja</em>.</figcaption>
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<p id="td9JJ6"><em>Siempre Bruja</em> shifts this pattern by making Carmen Eguiluz extraordinary but imperfect. It’s thrilling to see her exert her power by literally scaring the piss out of her friend’s toxic ex or <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enWUKekJJaU">levitating in a scene that recalls 1996’s <em>The Craft</em></a>. Rochelle, the black witch in that classic, needs her friends to levitate, but Carmen does so on her own — simply by sleeping. In addition to <em>The Craft</em>, you’ll see hints of 1992’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103994/"><em>Like Water for Chocolate</em></a> during a lunch scene and 2006’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lake_House_(film)"><em>The Lake House</em></a> as letters are exchanged in <em>Siempre Bruja</em>.</p>
<h3 id="QhrVmC">Witchcraft looks different through a nonwhite, non-American lens</h3>
<p id="GmewSZ">Produced by Colombia’s <a href="https://www.caracoltv.com/">Caracol TV</a> and created by Ana María Parra (<em>Cuando Vivas Conmigo</em>, <em>La Nocturna</em>), <em>Siempre Bruja</em> sets itself apart from white American productions about witchcraft in that most characters embrace Carmen’s magical abilities. They aren’t put off because she’s a witch. The opposite happens in shows like the <em>Chilling Adventures of Sabrina</em>, about a teenage witch of the same name. When Sabrina’s friends find out she practices magic, they’re unsettled by her ties to the occult and unsure how to behave around her. Her boyfriend, Harvey, struggles with having a witch girlfriend, and magic ultimately separates the couple.</p>
<p id="fNwJfS">Compare Harvey’s discomfort with witchcraft to how Galvin, an Afro-Latino scientist on the <em>Charmed</em> reboot, reacts when he discovers his girlfriend Macy is a witch. Because his culture has already exposed him to brujeria — his family members have told him about the occult — Galvin takes the news about Macy in stride. The <em>Siempre Bruja</em> characters have similar reactions upon discovering Carmen’s powers. </p>
<p id="GfskMj">“Carmen, are we going to do a ritual?” a friend inquires as she prepares them to do just that. When Carmen asks her friends if they’re afraid to proceed with the ceremony, they don’t hesitate to move forward with it, as they’ve been raised in a culture where belief in the inexplicable isn’t foreign to them. </p>
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<img alt="Angely Gaviria stars in Netflix’s Siempre Bruja." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/teAQgcADDHRHaPFQzKOvHkPxm3o=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/13760122/SiempreBrujaCarmen2.jpg">
<cite>Juan Pablo Gutierrez/Netflix</cite>
<figcaption>Angely Gaviria stars as Carmen Eguiluz on Netflix’s <em>Siempre Bruja</em>.</figcaption>
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<p id="iCAAFo">Though not all of the characters believe in God — one is an avowed atheist — they live in a Latin American country heavily influenced by Roman Catholic beliefs, including the belief in miracles. Accordingly, each character, even the nonbelievers, kneels before the <a href="http://www.dacapofoundation.com/SpecialInterest/PhilippineMadonnas/OurLadyOfCandelaria.htm">Virgin of Candelaria</a> during a festival in her honor and begs her for help. Mingled with this Catholicism are the traditions of the enslaved Africans brought to the Americas. The Virgin of Candelaria has dark skin, and her festival takes place in a black neighborhood where dancers perform traditional West African choreography in tribute to her. This is the neighborhood where Carmen was born and where her ancestors were persecuted for their blackness and magical abilities alike. </p>
<p id="tRGfK0">But Christianity and magic aren’t opposing forces for Carmen. She carries a picture of the Virgin with her and prays before her, just as her friends do. This sort of syncretism, familiar to many Christians of color, appears far too little in standard Hollywood fare about witchcraft. Magic inevitably looks different when shown through a lens that’s not white and American.</p>
<h3 id="fOeXBx">Angely Gaviria and the ensemble cast are the strengths of this show</h3>
<p id="f1gL5R">Angely Gaviria is, by far, the main reason to watch <em>Siempre Bruja</em>. Last seen in the boxing biopic <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6311896/"><em>Pambelé</em></a>, about Colombian fighter Antonio Cervantes, Gaviria shines onscreen. Her Carmen is vulnerable, optimistic, headstrong, and flawed. As she takes in her new 21st-century surroundings, the wonderment, and sometimes fear, in her eyes is palpable. But when a spell gone wrong brings out Carmen’s passive-aggressive nature, Gaviria capably plays that side of the character, too. </p>
<p id="Nbphkq">As <a href="http://remezcla.com/lists/film/latino-critics-netflix-siempre-bruja-review/">Kathia Woods of Remezcla</a> put it: “One of the reasons we are rooting for Carmen is because of Angely’s performance.” </p>
<p id="rFLTkl">Gaviria is joined by an ensemble cast with whom she has genuine chemistry. The wild-eyed Jhony Ki (Dylan Fuentes) emerges as the most charismatic character of the bunch. Fuentes offers comic relief in this role as Carmen’s friend, but he also shows a range of emotions — from anguish to regret to anxiety. As the wizard Aldemar, Luis Fernando Hoyos is a humorous cross between camp and venom. In contrast, Carmen’s professor Esteban (Sebastián Eslava) is more muted but, through furtive glances and quiet concern, reveals he knows more than he’s saying about the young witch. </p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="The cast of Netflix’s Siempre Bruja." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/nV0dReMZE4DBBcJTcKDYlxZ951w=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/13760091/CarmenfriendsSiempreBruja.jpg">
<cite>Netflix</cite>
<figcaption>The cast of Netflix’s second original Colombian series, <em>Siempre Bruja.</em>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="3RHz0e">The cast’s performance is enhanced by gorgeous setting and a pulsating <a href="https://www.what-song.com/Tvshow/100405/Always-a-Witch-Siempre-Bruja/e/113724">musical soundtrack</a> (featuring artists like Shari Short and Profetas) that make the highly plot-driven <em>Siempre Bruja</em> all the more lively. Beautifully shot in Bogotá, Cartagena, and Honda, Colombia, it’s hard not to feel transported to the country as Carmen dives into blue water, takes in the Caribbean greenery, and walks by Spanish colonial architecture. This is a series that engages the senses, whether Carmen is kneading dough, caressing her scorched feet, or mixing and matching the colorful prints in her 2019 wardrobe. </p>
<h3 id="Xtyjio">
<em>Siempre Bruja’s</em> flaw is an<em> </em>ill-advised romance that undercuts Carmen’s power </h3>
<p id="WYkXy2">While <em>Siempre Bruja</em> offers a take on witchcraft, rarely, if ever, seen stateside, Carmen’s willingness to revisit a time when she would be enslaved has <a href="https://twitter.com/lynjaimeee/status/1091515501283553280">outraged some viewers</a> and <a href="https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2019/02/223413/netflix-siempre-bruja-always-a-witch-carmen-cristobal-relationship">critics</a>. (But <a href="https://twitter.com/dayadream_/status/1091553445952319489">the show has its supporters</a> too.) They argue that a romance between an enslaved woman and a slaveholder’s son romanticizes a system largely rooted in the sexual exploitation of black women. As property of the Aranoa family, Carmen could not have consented to a romance with any member of it. And the idea that she would be fixated on returning to the 1600s rather than relishing her freedom in the 21st century may give the impression that slavery wasn’t every bit an unbearable institution. </p>
<p id="xwXRzG">Likely sensing that Carmen’s relationship would upset some of their audience, <em>Siempra Bruja</em>’s showrunners take pains to make Cristóbal a hero. He’s willing to risk his life for Carmen and vows to free everyone his father holds in bondage. Cristóbal is not one of <em>those white people</em>, the series insists, but righteous, brave, and socially progressive, despite growing up in a family of slaveholding aristocrats. He’s framed in a way that skates perilously close to white savior. </p>
<p id="kcnawY"><em>Siempre Bruja</em><strong> </strong>likely<strong> </strong>could have avoided pushback by removing the slavery context from this romance altogether. Carmen and Cristóbal’s relationship also overlooks that enslaved people needed no catalyst other than slavery to fight for their lives — and many turned to folk magic to do so. West African spiritual traditions, labeled witchcraft by European colonizers, played pivotal roles in <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1861/06/denmark-vesey/396239/">Denmark Vesey’s foiled 1822 slave rebellion</a> in South Carolina, in the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/44325417?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">Haitian Revolution</a>, and in Cartagena itself. There, in 1620, five enslaved Africans, four women and a man, were <a href="https://www.princeton.edu/~jweisenf/northstar/volume8/white.pdf">charged with practicing “diabolical witchcraft.”</a> <em>Siempre Bruja </em>alludes to this history when Carmen visits a black neighborhood during the <a href="http://www.colombia.travel/es/a-donde-ir/caribe/cartagena-de-indias/actividades/fiesta-de-nuestra-senora-de-la-candelaria">Festival of Candela</a> and has visions of her persecuted ancestors, but the show doesn’t go much deeper than that. </p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Angely Gaviria and Lenard Vanderaa star in Netflix’s Siempre Bruja." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/09Y7jHu_otLTq2J_HoU1NfixN8s=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/13760099/SiempreBrujaCarmenCristobal.jpg">
<cite>Juan Pablo Gutierrez/Netflix</cite>
<figcaption>A slavery-era romance on Netflix’s <em>Siempre Bruja </em>has upset some fans.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="Xqz3it"><em>Siempre Bruja </em>also sidesteps the subject of race in the present completely. Carmen is mostly surrounded by white and mestizo Colombians in the 21st century. She and Daniel (Dubán Andrés Prado), the one black person in her contemporary circle, do not discuss their shared racial heritage, and an indigenous man, Cancahuimacu, serves as a spiritual guide and nothing more. While <a href="https://www.theroot.com/fighting-for-black-lives-in-colombia-at-war-s-end-the-1796521962">Afro-Colombians have taken to the streets in recent years</a> to fight racism and demand equal rights in their country, Carmen’s dark skin is never the source of tension in her largely white 2019 environment. If the show gets a second season, it will hopefully improve its handling of race.</p>
<p id="ULVse8">But even though <em>Siempre Bruja</em> — like Carmen herself — is an imperfect show, it remains a game changer. It has gifted us with perhaps the most sensational black witch to appear onscreen. As TV shows and films frequently marginalize black witches or exclude them entirely, <em>Siempre Bruja</em> boldly shines the spotlight on black girl magic. Hollywood has yet to produce a black witch as compelling, or commanding, as Carmen Eguiluz.</p>
<p id="1sivg4"></p>
https://www.vox.com/2019/2/15/18225333/netflixs-siempre-bruja-black-witch-afro-latinoNadra Nittle2019-02-15T14:10:00-05:002019-02-15T14:10:00-05:00Meet Annie Turnbo Malone, the hair care entrepreneur Trump shouted out in his Black History Month proclamation
<figure>
<img alt="Annie Turnbo Malone" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/hthv6VLDuKWcXh7ilolt3K6lH0I=/0x0:486x365/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/63060453/malone_full.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Annie Turnbo Malone became a millionaire in the early 1900s after successfully launching a haircare empire for black women in St. Louis. | Wikimedia Commons</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>She became a millionaire after giving Madam C.J. Walker her big break as a sales agent.</p> <p id="jMGqel">One of the first black women to <a href="https://shsmo.org/historicmissourians/name/m/malone/">reach millionaire status</a> did so by launching a hair care empire — and her name wasn’t <a href="https://www.racked.com/2018/8/1/17637032/madam-cj-walker-octavia-spencer-lebron-james-netflix-biopic">Madam C.J. Walker</a>. Entrepreneur Annie Turnbo Malone reached this milestone at the end of World War I, and she just so happened to give beauty mogul Walker her start in the cosmetics industry. </p>
<p id="gueuoN">Since her 1957 death, however, Malone’s tremendous achievements have been widely overlooked. John H. Whitfield, the author of the biography <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Friend-All-Mankind-Turnbo-College/dp/1507526024"><em>A Friend to All Mankind: Mrs. Annie Turnbo Malone and Poro College</em></a>, spoke to Vox about Malone’s work and legacy.</p>
<p id="g4xW1I">“Mrs. Malone’s legacy is a merging of women’s health and economic independence,” Whitfield said.</p>
<p id="mMe2o1">After starting a hair care line inspired by Malone’s products, Walker became one of the wealthiest Americans of the early 1900s. She’s since become a staple of Black History Month lessons, and there’s a <a href="https://www.netflix.com/title/80202462">Netflix show in the works about her life</a> starring Octavia Spencer. Even people who aren’t very familiar with Walker likely know that she made a killing in the hair care business, but a mention of Malone outside St. Louis, where her business was first headquartered, is likely to elicit blank stares. </p>
<p id="aBPIVf">The website of the <a href="https://shsmo.org/historicmissourians/name/m/malone/">State Historical Society of Missouri</a> admits as much. “Annie Turnbo Malone’s legacy as a pioneer in the African American beauty and cosmetic business has largely been overshadowed by the success of her former employee, Madam CJ Walker,” it states. “This is beginning to change, however, and Malone is now being recognized for her role in launching the industry.”</p>
<p id="rTOkve">In fact, along with Mary McLeod Bethune and Booker T. Washington, Malone was one of the public figures mentioned in President Donald Trump’s <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/presidential-proclamation-national-african-american-history-month-2019/">2019 proclamation on Black History Month</a>.</p>
<p id="URnH7F">“Annie Malone ... became one of the most successful entrepreneurs in America at the turn of the century and provided opportunities for African Americans to pursue meaningful careers,” the proclamation said.</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Annie Turnbo Malone in front of Poro College." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/oby5dPHGOm_d9sJagGbDPunxrac=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/13766161/PoroCollege.jpg">
<cite>Photo courtesy of Robert Walker</cite>
<figcaption>Annie Turnbo Malone stands in front of Poro College with others affiliated with the institution.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="rRe4eQ">When hair salons were still anomalies, Malone helped to popularize cosmetology schools, through her own Poro College, and teach women about the importance of scalp health. And before corporate responsibility became a buzzword, she modeled the idea that <a href="https://www.anniemalonehistoricalsociety.org/philanthropy.html">business owners should give away much of their wealth</a>. </p>
<p id="zvPUGB">It’s also not hyperbole to suggest that without Annie Malone, Madam C.J. Walker would not have become a household name. Malone, after all, gave Walker, then working as a laundress, her first job as a hair care sales agent. Walker lived a shorter and, arguably, more dramatic life than Malone did, one reason why she eclipsed her former mentor to reach almost mythological status after her death. But history shows that both of these women, and their interconnected stories, deserve attention more than a century after they became two of the most influential entrepreneurs in the United States. </p>
<h3 id="EQuIZF">Annie Malone had a knack for chemistry and a fascination with hair</h3>
<p id="3sZZpo">Annie Malone was born in Metropolis, Illinois, to formerly enslaved parents in 1869. As a girl, she was fascinated by hair and by chemistry, but illness forced her out of high school. In spite of this setback, Malone continued to experiment with chemistry. With the guidance of her <a href="https://www.ebony.com/black-history/annie-turnbo-malone-ebonywhm/">herbalist aunt</a>, she began to make hair products catered to black women. One of her first products was a liquid shampoo, but Malone was particularly interested in finding a way to straighten hair that didn’t damage the hair follicles. </p>
<p id="EsKNwI">At the turn of the century, women often used bacon grease, heavy oils, and butter to straighten hair. Some also used a mixture of lye and potatoes. All of these methods were harmful to hair and scalp, so Malone experimented until she found a hair straightening formula that wasn’t so harsh. She called it her <a href="http://www.histarch.illinois.edu/Brooklyn/HSOBI/AnnieMalone.htm">Wonderful Hair Grower</a>. </p>
<p id="Ae5kuY">In 1902, Malone moved from Southern Illinois to St. Louis, Missouri, which was hosting the 1904 World’s Fair. She figured during this time she could attract major business in the city, which also boasted one of the nation’s largest black populations, and opened a shop on Market Street. At some point, likely in 1903, she met her most famous client — Madam C.J. Walker — who then went by the name Sarah Davis or Sarah McWilliams. </p>
<p id="pwJn3T">Walker had battled hair loss for years due to dandruff and psoriasis of the scalp, then known as “tetter.” Malone knew that the harsh alcohol-based tonics marketed for the condition only made tetter worse and recommended that Walker regularly wash her hair, use a sulfur-based treatment, improve her diet, and practice scalp massage to remedy her follicular woes. Malone’s motto was “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=U_YIfoQUlDMC&pg=PA308&lpg=PA308&dq=clean+scalps+clean+bodies+annie+malone&source=bl&ots=j8tMDn5v8m&sig=ACfU3U2AwBDzDCMihRjzhMjyJ878v765sw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiTo9mkxbrgAhXrCTQIHetYAx8Q6AEwDnoECAUQAQ#v=onepage&q=clean%20scalps%20clean%20bodies%20annie%20malone&f=false">clean scalps mean clean bodies</a>” because the method worked.<strong> </strong>Before long, Walker’s hair grew from shorter than her ears to past her shoulders. </p>
<p id="85L0Fo">“Mrs. Malone’s Poro system was not based on hair styling as much as it was on scalp hygiene,” according to Whitfield. </p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Madam CJ Walker’s Wonderful Hair Grower" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/0PcW9EKc9vg_IYsfD4QdiZkLfZ4=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/13766111/madame_cj_walkerwonderfulhairgrower.jpg">
<cite>Smithsonian</cite>
<figcaption>Madam C.J. Walker’s Wonderful Hair Grower was modeled after a similar product created by Annie Malone.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="j9yVxD">When Walker moved to Denver in 1905, she began to sell her own products, which were clearly modeled after Malone’s. She, too, had a product called <a href="https://nmaahc.si.edu/blog-post/madam-cj-walker%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%9Cwonderful-hair-grower">Wonderful Hair Grower</a>, for example. A furious Malone took out an ad in the Colorado Statesman warning readers to “<a href="https://www.fff.org/explore-freedom/article/two-extraordinary-african-american-entrepreneurs/">beware of imitations</a>,” but Walker’s career continued to soar. </p>
<h3 id="FMT9a0">Rivals who both achieved great success</h3>
<p id="kwsSiK">Though Annie Malone and Madam CJ Walker were business rivals, both women achieved great wealth after finding their niche in the hair care business. Walker died of kidney failure at age 51 in 1919 with a net worth of roughly $600,000, according to her great-great-granddaughter’s biography, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Her-Own-Ground-Walker-Paperback/dp/0743431723"><em>On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam CJ Walker</em></a>. By this time Malone was already a millionaire, but Walker is the mogul who was (wrongly) labeled the first female “self-made millionaire.” </p>
<p id="jUh9mu">After her untimely death, Walker was also falsely credited with inventing chemical hair relaxers and the hot comb. In fact, neither she nor Malone invented the hot comb. That honor goes to a <a href="http://www.freemaninstitute.com/poro.htm">Frenchman named Marcel Grateau</a>, who reportedly created the hair tool in 1872 for white women seeking to wear their hair in sleek <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/1/14/18182744/cleopatra-white-actress-liz-taylor-angelina-jolie-lady-gaga">Cleopatra-style bobs</a>. When Grateau came up with his invention, both Walker and Malone were small children. But Walker’s death turned her into a legend of sorts. </p>
<p id="cvJMwm">“The story of Madam CJ Walker was popularized, justifiably, from photographs demonstrating the growth of her wealth, albeit short-lived, and the appeal of her ‘rags to riches’ experience,” Whitfield said. “The story of Mrs. Annie Turnbo Malone exemplified a different focus — self-help and personal dignity.”</p>
<div class="c-float-right"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Madam CJ Walker" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/fVxPdVTFSVwvny_KPXfeC699Tzo=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/13766075/MadamCJWalker.jpg">
<cite>Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Walker was a client of Malone and, later, a rival.</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
<p id="GAn0xi">While Malone was formally educated in the North, Walker was born on a Louisiana plantation and spent just a few months in the classroom as a child. She married at 14, had a daughter a few years later, and was widowed at 20. In spite of these odds, she went from washerwoman to businesswoman. That amazing trajectory, combined with Walker’s PR savvy — she was married to adman C.J. Walker — is likely one of the reasons she reached almost mythological status. </p>
<p id="17BfJ6">But there’s room enough in history to honor Malone and Walker, especially since the former’s business expertise led to the rise of the latter. One generation removed from slavery, these two black women both ran wildly successful business empires unimaginable to even the average American, let alone to average black women, who worked mostly as domestics during the turn of the century. </p>
<p id="Jm2yDs">Malone’s life, on the other hand was hardly as dramatic as Walker’s. While both women were orphaned as children, Malone hadn’t experienced abject poverty in the South or widowhood, as Walker had. In short, her life was not as sensational, and thus, not as headline-grabbing as her former client’s was. Malone’s long life was another reason her story wasn’t mythologized. She lived to be nearly 90 years old. She saw her business through the Great Depression and managed to keep it under her control after her costly divorce from her second husband. By the 1950s, <a href="https://shsmo.org/historicmissourians/name/m/malone/">32 branches of her Poro cosmetology school were up and running</a> across the country. </p>
<p id="QdTd0j">Today, Malone may not be the household name that Walker is, but Whitfield says that she lives on through her philanthropic efforts.</p>
<p id="WDfVj5">“Mrs. Malone has already received the attention she desired through the continued work of <a href="http://csc-stl.org/service/1862/annie-malone-children-family-service-center">Annie Malone Children and Family Service Center</a>, which provides a myriad of support opportunities for St. Louis-area youth,” he says. “There is also <a href="https://www.anniemalone.com/parade">an annual Annie Malone parade</a> in St. Louis. I have confidence that one day Mrs. Malone will be more widely recognized.”</p>
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https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/2/15/18226396/annie-turnbo-malone-hair-entrepreneur-trump-black-historyNadra Nittle2019-02-12T17:40:00-05:002019-02-12T17:40:00-05:00Why retailers overlook women who aren’t quite plus or straight size
<figure>
<img alt="Curve model Ashley Graham" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/R22fiaDAuOdRquEWq1C8TayAABs=/167x0:2834x2000/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/63043433/AshleyGraham2.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>The popularity of curve models like Ashley Graham haven’t made it any easier for women who fall on the large end of straight sizes to shop. | Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images for Lifetime</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The rise of curve models like Ashley Graham hasn’t necessarily given customers who wear cusp sizes more visibility.</p> <p id="r5zdu3">Fashion’s struggles with size inclusivity have spanned decades. For far too long, women who didn’t fit into “standard” clothing sizes had difficulty walking into a store and leaving with something they could wear. While that problem is still very much a reality, a growing number of retailers sell plus-size clothing or have <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/10/12/17969968/womens-clothing-sizes-divided-straight-sizes-plus-sizes-universal-standard-clothing-segregation">extended their size ranges to accommodate a variety of women</a>. Now, whether you wear straight sizes, plus sizes, or need a <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/9/26/17902336/clothes-short-retailers-petite-men-ash-and-erie-peter-manning-jimmy-aus">petite fit</a>, you can probably find at least one retailer that specializes in serving you. </p>
<p id="gLbY0a">For women who fall into the zone colloquially known as “in-between” sizes, which range from roughly size 10 to 14, this may not be the case. These shoppers generally find themselves at the larger end of straight sizes or the smaller end of plus. More often than not, they get short shrift from straight-size retailers (which usually cater to sizes 00 to 12), but they may be too small to wear the offerings available from plus retailers (which generally offer sizes 14 to 32).</p>
<p id="t55yXJ">If you want to know what it’s like to shop as an “in-betweener,” look no further than <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/31/lululemon-plus-size_n_3675605.html">Huffington Post’s 2013 investigation into Lululemon</a>. The website found that at a Philadelphia outpost of the athleisure company, size 10 and 12 clothes were rarely restocked and were moved to a separate area of the store, “clumped and unfolded under a table.” </p>
<div class="c-float-right"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt="The founders of Ava James say they started the brand to be inclusive to women who wear cusp sizes." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/1smjXvqi42Ofh0Mcw1UEuTDsEpA=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/13755004/BERLIN_DOVEGREY_4.jpg">
<cite>Ava James</cite>
<figcaption>Ava James is a retailer that caters to women sizes 8-18.</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
<p id="5quy48">And the issue goes far beyond Lululemon. In her 2016 piece “<a href="https://www.racked.com/2016/11/29/13706526/why-is-inclusive-sizing-so-hard">Why Is Inclusive Sizing So Hard?</a>” Britt Aboutaleb, then editor of Racked, recalled having to beg for size 8 and 10 clothes in New York’s indie boutiques. She said sales associates would often reassure her, “We have bigger sizes in back!” </p>
<p id="V6YbvY">The fact that in-betweeners are not the preferred demographic of straight-size retailers means shopping still poses challenges for these customers. One new brand, <a href="https://www.avajamesnyc.com/">Ava James</a>, launched last year specifically to meet the needs of women sizes 8 to 18, a range that includes the oft-overlooked cusp sizes. And body positivity influencers like Renee Cafaro, the US editor of <a href="https://slinkmagazine.com/">Slink</a> magazine, focused on fashion, fitness, beauty, and lifestyle, are discussing the unique needs of women of all clothing sizes, including in-betweeners.</p>
<h3 id="pKsXyP">Why retailers keep overlooking women on the cusp<strong> </strong>
</h3>
<p id="X9uzhd">Eugena Delman says her sister’s struggles with retail as a size 14 were one reason she created the premium clothing brand Ava James, which she co-founded in 2018 with Saena Chung. With a size range of 8 to 18, Ava James offers mostly dresses for $215 to $250. The <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17543266.2016.1214291?journalCode=tfdt20&">average American woman wears between a size 16 and 18</a>, and Delman said she wanted to give the women straight-size retailers ignore more options in the high-end category. </p>
<p id="8VTxj0">“We think in-betweeners have been overlooked due to the costs and time associated with getting the fit right for a wide range of sizes,” she told me. “The typical designer will usually create their designs using a sample size of 2 or 4. The pattern for this sample will be used to make multiple sizes; however, there are only so many sizes that one can make from this pattern before the pattern gets distorted and fit becomes a major problem.”</p>
<p id="EYCBh3">That’s why many straight-size designers will stop at size 10 or 12. But plus retailers also have a finite number of sizes they can make from one pattern, so they begin at a bigger size to service the full plus range, usually falling between sizes 14 and 26, Delman explained. </p>
<p id="GFhceN">“By starting at a smaller size, plus retailers would run the risk of distorted fit or have to invest in new patterns that enable them to service a wider range,” she said.</p>
<div class="c-float-left"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Retailer Ava James wants to be size inclusive." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/bH0tw2b6yML8rJdKwJvThUk8qgA=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/13755024/NEWYORK_WHITE_1.jpg">
<cite>Ava James</cite>
<figcaption>Ava James sells high-end clothes to women sizes 8-18. </figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
<p id="xqnEtS">Because of the types of manufacturing limitations Delman described, in-betweeners lack the clothing options that their counterparts who fall squarely into straight or plus sizes have. Since it’s more cost-effective to manufacture clothes from one pattern, as Delman said, a cusp-size garment from a plus retailer may run larger than one of the same size from a straight-size retailer. </p>
<p id="iDZTdU">“My friends who are a solid 14 — they complain of being just a little too big for the straight-sized 14 but too small for the proportions of the [plus-size] 14” Cafaro said.</p>
<p id="JfxW4g">Just last year, brands like <a href="https://click.linksynergy.com/deeplink?id=nOD%2FrLJHOac&mid=40090&u1=racked&murl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thereformation.com%2Fcategories%2Fref-ali-tate-cutler">Reformation</a>, <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com/?id=66960X1514733&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.marahoffman.com%2Fspecialty-shop-1%2Fextended-sizes">Mara Hoffman</a>, and <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com/?id=66960X1514733&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fcynthiarowley.com%2Fproducts%2Fmesh-one-piece-swimsuit%3Fvariant%3D43339224720">Cynthia Rowley</a> extended their size ranges, as have brands from big-box retailers like <a href="https://click.linksynergy.com/deeplink?id=nOD%2FrLJHOac&mid=2149&u1=racked&murl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.walmart.com%2F">Walmart</a> and <a href="https://www.target.com/c/universal-thread/-/N-rgtfe?clkid=2d30a173Ne5ddad54813153400e35b53e&lnm=81938&afid=Skimbit%20Ltd.&ref=tgt_adv_xasd0002">Target</a>. But as Delman points out, “The vast majority of smaller designers won’t necessarily have the resources or the desire to extend their size range.” </p>
<p id="6N6kvx">This is especially the case, she said, with higher-end clothing brands, <a href="https://fashionista.com/2018/05/luxury-designer-plus-size-clothing-problem">notorious for not offering a wide range of clothes beyond about a size 10</a>. Cafaro says her family members and friends who wear sizes 10 to 14 never know if they’ll be able to fit into the clothes from high-fashion brands. (The lack of standardized sizing across the industry doesn’t help — more on that below.)</p>
<p id="JcxlKr">“I think many people have no idea about the challenges of the in-betweener,” Cafaro said. “Or they lump the in-betweener into the plus-size category. The two groups face different issues: In-betweeners may find options with straight-size designers, but those options will be limited in terms of sizes and styles, whereas plus customers have no options with straight-size designers but there are retail options that cater specifically to them. Both groups are still massively underserved!”</p>
<h3 id="zj9qR3">Irregular sizing only makes shopping more complicated for in-betweeners</h3>
<p id="jbUKox">The lack of standard sizing in women’s apparel can make clothes shopping challenging for everyone, especially women in the low double digits. Last June, <a href="https://www.racked.com/2018/6/13/17453192/h-m-sizes-changing">H&M announced that it would change its sizing</a> to be more in line with North American standards — so that a size 12 would now be a size 10 and a medium a small — after <a href="https://stylecaster.com/hm-customer-complaint-ridiculous-sizing/">customers complained</a> that the <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/femalefashionadvice/comments/4p43ze/shopper_calls_out_hm_for_sizing_issues/">clothes fit too tightly</a>. When clothes fit smaller than expected at straight-size retailers, in-betweeners may be unable to find anything that fits them since they’re already at the higher end of the size range. </p>
<p id="mK2edi">“It’s particularly tough to be a 12 or a 14 when that may be the last size a brand carries,” Cafaro explained. “If you are usually a 10/12 in one brand but another runs small, you are stuck leaving empty-handed.”</p>
<p id="mqsqQw"><a href="https://www.truefit.com/en/Home">True Fit</a>, a company that helps customers find their best size across a spectrum of retailers, <a href="https://www.today.com/style/jeans-don-t-fit-here-s-explanation-inconsistency-women-s-t100419">found that waist sizes in women’s jeans can deviate by up to 5 inches</a>. According to the company, the average woman fluctuates between three different clothing sizes because of inconsistency from retailer to retailer, though customers have complained of their clothing size varying at the same retailer too. Online shoppers are particularly vulnerable to this since they can’t try on clothes beforehand. </p>
<p id="zfyi1g">“As a new brand, this was the one thing that really drove us crazy, the lack of standardized sizing across the industry,” Delman said. “We spent hours trying to figure out the best way to create our size guide. At the end of the day, we decided to average and extrapolate the measurements from a number of different brands.”</p>
<p id="67pARY">Delman says the only solution is to get the clothing industry to standardize sizes or to make sure that customers know their measurements. That said, size 28 jeans in one brand still may not fit the same as size 28 in another. </p>
<h3 id="m0VehQ">Curve models are typically in-betweeners, but they haven’t made these customers more visible</h3>
<p id="nTo3pF">Some of the biggest plus or “curve” models, like Ashley Graham and Robin Lawley, are actually in-betweeners. <a href="https://www.detroitnews.com/story/entertainment/books/2017/05/19/call-ashley-graham-plus-size/101895874/">Graham has said that she’s a size 14</a>, and <a href="https://www.racked.com/2016/7/14/12060482/in-between-plus-sample-size-8-10-12-14">Lawley wore a size 12 when she appeared in the 2015 Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition</a>. Despite the mass media attention both of these women have received, they are widely regarded as plus models and have not necessarily influenced retailers to serve the needs of in-betweeners, Cafaro said. Curve models are typically used to represent all women considered curvy or plus rather than just those from size 10 to 14.</p>
<div class="c-float-right"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Curve models like Ashley Graham have grown more popular, but they aren’t necessarily making retailers focus more on “in-betweeners.”" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/yQqGS_AeeBl4bdiia_iufmkh_vQ=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/13755017/AshleyGraham.jpg">
<cite>Victor VIRGILE/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Model Ashley Graham says she wears a size 14, making her an “in-betweener.”</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
<p id="vXG25m">“There are certainly more conversations around body positivity and inclusivity [now] that weren’t happening 10 years ago,” she said. “Having said that, I don’t think using curve models has necessarily drawn attention specifically to the in-betweeners; rather, it’s more about how insular the fashion world has been in using only super-slim models and raising awareness around the plus movement generally.”</p>
<p id="arNJ59">In addition to models like Graham and Lawley, actresses such as Mindy Kaling and Amy Schumer reportedly fall into this category, but they are also often lumped into plus by media outlets, despite their objections to the label. <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2016/04/05/entertainment/amy-schumer-glamour-body-shaming-feat/index.html">Schumer has openly resisted being described as plus</a>, and Kaling has described herself as “<a href="https://www.glamour.com/story/body-image-mindy-kaling-on-bei">normal American woman size</a>.”</p>
<p id="ilnJJO">By ignoring women above a size 10, Cafaro said that retailers are “leaving a lot of money on the table.” </p>
<p id="vJQ5CF">“I think the idea is to expand the profit margins by being more realistic and serving all women,” she said. “Sixty-seven percent of women are over a size 14 in America, and brands must allow an inclusive range to ensure all customers have the flexibility to find the fit they desire.”</p>
<p id="xNMg8v">But beyond the profits that can be made from in-betweeners, society is slowly accepting the idea that <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/better/health/how-beauty-standard-has-changed-1990-how-it-hasn-t-ncna809766">there’s more than one kind of physical standard of beauty</a>, Cafaro continued. She argued that retailers need to recognize this by expanding their styles and sizes for all women.</p>
<p id="CJuDC6">“With the majority of women in America being considered plus size, it is absurd to me that we are considered the outliers,” she said. </p>
<p id="T7NiA7"><em>Want more stories from The Goods by Vox? </em><a href="http://vox.com/goods-newsletter"><em><strong>Sign up for our newsletter here</strong></em></a><em><strong>.</strong></em></p>
https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/2/12/18222409/retailers-women-in-between-plus-straight-sizeNadra Nittle2019-02-12T17:22:44-05:002019-02-12T17:22:44-05:00Gucci is the latest fashion brand to spark a blackface controversy
<figure>
<img alt="Gucci apologized and pulled a sweater likened to blackface." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/SYWkCHBJX0YdKMEd2ok3C7up6_c=/233x0:1630x1048/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/63017598/Gucci_1.0.png" />
<figcaption>Gucci has pulled a sweater that’s sparked blackface comparisons. | Gucci</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A black sweater with bright red lips has led to an uproar months after Prada figurines were similarly called out.</p> <p id="Uktbvf">Gucci’s chief executive, François-Henri Pinault, has spoken out about the uproar his company found himself in last week when social media users complained that its balaclava sweater resembled blackface. </p>
<p id="2Zdxej">Pinault told the Wall Street Journal that <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/gucci-owner-pledges-sensitivity-training-after-blackface-sweater-11549996946?mod=hp_lead_pos10">Gucci’s parent company, Kering, needs to be more culturally sensitive</a> to African Americans. While the luxury conglomerate has teams who review products for the Asian market, they don’t have similar groups in place to review how sensitive products are to African Americans. </p>
<p id="xyFC9S">“It’s true we don’t do that for the African-American community, and that’s a mistake,” Mr. Pinault said.</p>
<p id="x0BDlD">Last week, Gucci issued an apology for selling a sweater resembling blackface and pulled it from stores. The black turtleneck-style sweater features an opening with a pair of bright red lips that can be stretched around the wearer’s mouth. To many people on social media, the $890 sweater looked like the <a href="https://www.vox.com/2014/10/29/7089591/why-is-blackface-offensive-halloween-costume">blackface makeup used historically by white performers</a> to mock and make caricatures of African Americans. </p>
<p id="VjLr3p">”Gucci deeply apologizes for the offense caused by the wool balaclava jumper,” the company said in a statement. “We can confirm that the item has been immediately removed from our online store and all physical stores.”</p>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Gucci deeply apologizes for the offense caused by the wool balaclava jumper.<br>We consider diversity to be a fundamental value to be fully upheld, respected, and at the forefront of every decision we make. <br>Full statement below. <a href="https://t.co/P2iXL9uOhs">pic.twitter.com/P2iXL9uOhs</a></p>— gucci (@gucci) <a href="https://twitter.com/gucci/status/1093345744080306176?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 7, 2019</a>
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<script async="" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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<p id="ZluoNQ">The company, part of the French luxury conglomerate Kering, said that it was “fully committed to increasing diversity throughout our organization” and that it considers the controversy over the sweater to be a “powerful learning moment.” </p>
<p id="UnhNBU">The uproar over the sweater comes as fashion brands have recently found themselves ensnared in racial controversies and photos of Virginia politicians in blackface have led to calls for the lawmakers to resign. </p>
<p id="9Br3Us">Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring admitted Wednesday that, while attending the University of Virginia, <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/2/6/18213971/mark-herring-blackface-virginia-ralph-northam">he wore blackface to look like rapper Kurtis Blow</a> at a party in 1980. Herring’s admission followed the discovery of a photo of Virginia Gov. <a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/2/6/18213902/ralph-northam-justin-fairfax-mark-herring-blackface-virginia-governor-line-of-succession">Ralph Northam allegedly in blackface</a> in his 1984 medical school yearbook. Northam, a fellow Democrat, said that he had worn blackface to dress up as Michael Jackson. </p>
<p id="PimsBT">But Virginia isn’t the only state roiled by blackface controversies. Last month, <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/01/24/new-secretary-state-ertel-dressed-blackface-halloween-2005/2669295002/">Michael Ertel, Florida’s new secretary of state, resigned</a> after pictures of him in blackface mocking Hurricane Katrina victims surfaced. Blackface controversies have even hit the news media, with <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/10/25/18023260/megyn-kelly-blackface-today-show-nbc">NBC’s Megyn Kelly resigning</a> last fall after remarking she didn’t understand why blackface was offensive. She later apologized. </p>
<p id="uKiRWr">The blackface controversies and the racial tensions in the country generally have affected fashion brands as well. The fashion brand <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/12/14/18141320/prada-racist-blackface-imagery-sambo-figurines-charms">Prada pulled figurines</a> in December after a passerby at its New York store said they reminded her of blackface. The figures, known as Pradamalia, have dark skin and exaggerated red lips, the hallmarks of historic images used to denigrate African Americans.</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="A group of Prada figurines have been compared to racist caricatures." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/WJZulCPUbYuPbgDmKIrjkTYERqQ=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/13627180/PradaSohostorefront.jpeg">
<cite>Chinyere Ezie</cite>
<figcaption>Prada pulled figurines that ignited a blackface controversy.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="vOLqab">Fashion has also been rocked by other racial controversies. In December, a former <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/1/16/18185696/moschino-code-word-serena-black-shoppers-racism">Moschino worker accused the brand of racially profiling black customers</a> by using the code name “Serena.” The month before <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/23/fashion/dolce-gabbana-china-disaster-backlash.html?module=inline">Dolce & Gabbana ads were criticized for stereotyping Chinese people</a>. </p>
<p id="1tvtnP">Be they fashion brands, politicians, or <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/28/business/media/tom-brokaw-hispanics-assimilation.html">news anchors</a>, no one in today’s highly charged political climate can expect to escape scrutiny for bigotry. But the fact that these incidents continue to happen shows just how deeply entrenched racism is in society. </p>
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<p id="1vYM7r"></p>
https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/2/7/18215671/gucci-blackface-sweater-apology-prada-virginiaNadra Nittle2019-02-07T09:00:00-05:002019-02-07T09:00:00-05:00The ’90s killed yellow gold engagement rings, but now they’re back
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<img alt="Meghan Markle’s engagement ring" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/AhaFc0CvWP62GbxVAuMG6EWgYQI=/166x0:1735x1177/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/63011151/yellowgoldengagementring.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Meghan Markle’s three-stone yellow gold engagement ring has helped start a trend. | Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty Images</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Thanks to indie designers and Meghan Markle.</p> <p id="iLhZbb">This <a href="https://nrf.com/media-center/press-releases/fewer-consumers-celebrating-valentines-day-those-who-do-are-spending">Valentine’s Day, Americans are expected to spend a record $20.7 billion</a> on everything from cards to romantic dinners. But more than anywhere else on the occasion, consumers flock to jewelry stores. Valentine’s Day is one of the most popular holidays for engagements and weddings, a major reason why Americans shell out more cash on jewelry than any other merchandise this time of year. </p>
<p id="CVfACV">But the engagement rings and wedding bands you’ll see on couples in 2019 might look different from their predecessors of even just five years ago. After two decades of platinum and white gold dominating wedding jewelry, <a href="https://www.laurenbjewelry.com/blog/spotlight-on-yellow-gold-engagement-rings-comeback/">yellow gold is back</a>, say <a href="https://www.brides.com/story/engagement-ring-trends">jewelry retailers</a> and experts alike. </p>
<p id="KSEskO">The color’s renaissance in recent years might be part of the general turn toward gold jewelry that’s seen the <a href="https://www.kcet.org/shows/artbound/adornment-exhibit-highlights-beauty-and-traditions-of-women-of-color">bamboo earrings</a>, <a href="https://www.souljewelry.com/">nameplate necklaces</a>, and <a href="https://vanessamooney.com/search?q=mary*">religious jewelry</a> long found at swap meets marketed to the general public as hip and edgy. Refinery29’s Channing Hargrove recently suggested <a href="https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2019/02/223448/white-women-gold-jewelry-trend">that this trend is cultural appropriation</a>. In terms of gold wedding jewelry, however, the unconventional tastes of millennial brides and grooms might also be at play. </p>
<p id="uXD1L2">Twenty-somethings have been blamed for bypassing <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewjosuweit/2017/10/22/5-industries-millennials-are-killing-and-why/">diamond engagement rings</a>, and sometimes precious gems altogether, for New Age faves like <a href="https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/fashion/style/a9140463/most-popular-engagement-ring-style-millennials/">quartz instead</a>. Gold bands might simply be another way for young couples to mix up the wedding jewelry they’ve come to view as conformist and unimaginative. </p>
<p id="ha5ngU">And the influence of the most visible couple to wed last year can’t be counted out: Prince Harry presented Meghan Markle with a gold engagement ring.</p>
<h3 id="s5SaGL">How Meghan Markle is influencing wedding jewelry<strong> </strong>
</h3>
<p id="M4exKp">Even before Markle became engaged to Prince Harry, the jewelry she wore garnered interest — from a <a href="https://www.firstforwomen.com/posts/meghan-markle-ring-124799">ring with the initial “H”</a> to a necklace with both of their initials — nearly all of it gold. So, it wasn’t surprising that when they decided to wed, Markle’s engagement ring and wedding band were both yellow gold. </p>
<p id="8B7dUH">The Welsh gold wedding band was gifted to Markle by Queen Elizabeth, and Prince Harry purchased <a href="http://money.com/money/5037926/meghan-markle-prince-harry-engagement-ring/">the three-stone engagement ring described as priceless</a> by jewelry experts due to its link to Princess Diana’s jewelry collection. Discussing the ring, Prince Harry suggested there was no doubt what color metal he would choose for the band.</p>
<p id="44Kj5Q">“The ring is obviously yellow gold because that’s [Meghan’s] favorite, and the main stone itself is sourced from Botswana and the little diamonds either side are from my mother’s jewelry collection to make sure that she’s with us on this crazy journey together,” <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/live/uk-42116319">Prince Harry said of the engagement ring during a BBC interview</a>.</p>
<p id="kWUBRO">Predictably, the ring has spawned knockoffs — ranging from under $100 to thousands of dollars. Buckingham Palace is even selling replicas of the ring for $40. </p>
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</div></a><p style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;"><a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BoGc1gFB7mg/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_medium=loading" style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">A post shared by @buckinghampalaceshop</a> on <time style=" font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px;" datetime="2018-09-24T07:39:26+00:00">Sep 24, 2018 at 12:39am PDT</time></p>
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<p id="cwsJd2">“Their choice of a yellow gold, three-stone ring instantly bestowed that style with a regal gloss,” Tanya Dukes, a runway stylist and jewelry expert, told Vox. “And in true millennial fashion, they were focused on where the diamonds were sourced and their personal connection to them.”</p>
<p id="MmzyRC">Collectively, the sheer number of royal lookalikes flooding the market now means yellow gold, once disparaged as “tacky” and old-fashioned, is influencing bridal trends again. In addition to Markle, Dukes credits independent designers with ushering in the yellow gold engagement ring trend.</p>
<p id="oLKPxO">“I think there’s a fair degree of excitement among jewelry producers that clients have recently become more open to engagement rings in yellow gold and rose gold,” she said. “Often independent designers in the wedding category, like Erika Winters, Megan Thorne, Jade Trau, and Ila Collection have been at the forefront of advancing the yellow gold trend.”</p>
<p id="bouTqQ"><a href="https://www.annasheffield.com/">Anna Sheffield</a>, <a href="https://mociun.com/">Mociun</a>, and <a href="https://www.barneys.com/product/pamela-love-fine-jewelry-white-diamond-luna-ring-504385992.html?ranMID=38359&ranEAID=z1KL9yrNyf4&ranSiteID=z1KL9yrNyf4-ozG71QwLicjJApm25qZ7tA&utm_source=z1KL9yrNyf4&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_campaign=1&utm_content=602296&siteID=z1KL9yrNyf4-ozG71QwLicjJApm25qZ7tA">Pamela Love</a> are also part of this trend, as are celebrities not named Meghan Markle; Dukes pointed out that Kirsten Dunst, Miley Cyrus, and Mary-Kate Olsen have gold engagement rings too.</p>
<h3 id="3Fed0s">Why gold engagement rings and wedding bands fell out of fashion</h3>
<p id="3BkO4c">Gold engagement rings were standard when baby boomers tied the knot (for the first time) from the 1960s to 1980s. But by the ’90s, when Gen Xers began heading down the aisle, gold wedding jewelry had fallen out of favor. Even jewelry experts can’t be sure exactly why, but since the decade was one in which looks like grunge and “<a href="https://bust.com/music/193138-kinderwhore-courtney-love.html">kinderwhore</a>” dominated mainstream fashion — you could find lookalikes of Courtney Love’s baby doll dresses at the mall — gold simply may have been deemed too flashy for the time. </p>
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</div></a> <p style=" margin:8px 0 0 0; padding:0 4px;"> <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BtG2jUPDkjC/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_medium=loading" style=" color:#000; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none; word-wrap:break-word;" target="_blank">Swooooning over this Tiara Curve and emerald cut #Bea duo in yellow gold and white diamond. Photo: @elizapagejewelry</a></p> <p style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;">A post shared by <a href="https://www.instagram.com/annasheffield/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_medium=loading" style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px;" target="_blank"> Anna Sheffield</a> (@annasheffield) on <time style=" font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px;" datetime="2019-01-26T18:01:06+00:00">Jan 26, 2019 at 10:01am PST</time></p>
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<p id="5R5oEQ">Although consumerism ultimately swallowed up grunge, innovators of the trend cloaked themselves in flannel shirts and grandpa sweaters to express that they didn’t care about capitalist-driven fashion. Even gangsta rap, which influenced trends during this time too, was largely centered on functional clothing. </p>
<p id="Efx7nW">In the West Coast rap scene, <a href="https://www.vogue.com/article/snoop-dogg-pharrell-britney-spears-west-coast-dickies-drop-it-like-its-hot-cross-colours">the workwear brand Dickies was ubiquitous</a>. While some of these rappers still rocked gold chains, the ethos of the ’90s was generally minimalist, a reason why the pared-down fashion of <a href="https://www.whowhatwear.com/carolyn-bessette-kennedy-style/slide3">Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy</a> became just as influential as the grunge look.</p>
<p id="i3I2BF">“The look [of the ‘90s] was a quieter, more understated reaction that fit in with the period’s low-key minimalist style,” Dukes said.</p>
<p id="Atb2PK">By the early aughts, gold was deemed so distasteful that <em>Sex and the City’s</em> Carrie Bradshaw actually vomited after discovering her <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9W0FH8rtCuE">boyfriend planned to propose with a gold engagement ring</a>. She admitted to liking to wear her “ghetto gold” nameplate necklace for fun, but she didn’t want the color for something as serious as an engagement ring. </p>
<p id="S9T5Zj">The admission revealed the character’s class consciousness and how gold was viewed as the metal of the nation’s underclass. The 1980s and early ’90s saw rap groups like <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=run+dmc&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS761US762&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjWvOqTjqjgAhVcwMQHHabyAuwQ_AUIDigB&biw=1440&bih=736#imgrc=hkvp05GEeTOGLM:">Run-D.M.C.</a> and <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=salt+n+pepa&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS761US762&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiMqYnYjajgAhWKilQKHcs4AG0Q_AUIDigB&biw=1440&bih=736#imgrc=L5vSFJjjjMvopM:">Salt-n-Pepa</a> drape themselves in thick gold chains, and even today, some retailers advertise imitations of these chains as “rapper chains” or “<a href="https://www.ebay.com/itm/Big-Daddy-Rapper-Pimp-King-Disco-Chunky-Gold-Chain-70cm-fancy-dress-costume-acc-/231494588900">pimp chains</a>.”</p>
<p id="321wML">Eighteen years later after Carrie Bradshaw melted down over a gold engagement ring, it’s hard to imagine that a television show would send its protagonist into crisis over a ring’s color. Now it would seem more realistic to portray a character panicking about whether the gemstone was ethically sourced. </p>
<p id="aSBTCO">Even Prince Harry made a point to mention where the diamonds in Markle’s engagement ring came from, likely not only because he’s spent so much time in Botswana but also because the natural diamond industry there has supported development in the country, Dukes said. </p>
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<p id="ViHj4N">If the revival of gold wedding jewelry teaches us anything, it’s what we already know: Fashion trends are cyclical. </p>
<p id="5zzTeH">“Couples getting married now want something that’s a bit of a departure from the generation before,” Dukes said. “Yellow gold looks fresh to their eyes.” </p>
<p id="Uloosy">So, give it 20 years, and gold will start to look stale again.</p>
<p id="0thz3O"><em>Want more stories from The Goods by Vox? </em><a href="http://vox.com/goods-newsletter"><em><strong>Sign up for our newsletter here.</strong></em></a> </p>
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https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/2/7/18214504/yellow-gold-engagement-rings-meghan-markleNadra Nittle2019-02-05T22:13:46-05:002019-02-05T22:13:46-05:00Why Democratic women wore white to the State of the Union
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<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/3SCQWFuup9oOttgaxnS0BB6KESU=/310x0:5259x3712/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/63004513/GettyImages_1094199890.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Women Congress members wearing white attend President Trump’s State of the Union address at the US Capitol on February 5, 2019. | Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wore suffragist white to Trump’s address.</p> <p id="CAo6AN"><em>This post was published in 2019. In 2020, for the third time since Trump was elected, </em><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2020/2/4/21120340/state-of-the-union-2020-outfits-political-statement"><em>Democratic women wore white</em></a><em> to the </em><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2020/2/4/21120340/state-of-the-union-2020-outfits-political-statement"><em>State of the Union</em></a><em>. </em></p>
<p id="cUBk0i">It was impossible to miss the women lawmakers of the Democratic Party as President Trump delivered the <a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/2/1/18207374/state-of-union-2019-trump-stacey-abrams">State of the Union</a> Tuesday. Each time the camera cut away from Trump, the bloc of women lawmakers in all-white ensembles could be seen taking in his annual address. And sitting behind Trump was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in a cream blazer and white top of her own. </p>
<p id="6OH4IT">The women legislators dressed in white to make a striking visual statement about how the Trump administration has handled issues important to women, from health care to equal pay. Trump’s tenure in the White House has coincided with movements like #MeToo and the Women’s March.</p>
<p id="yM7b5E">Be it pussyhats, “nasty woman” T-shirts, or suffragist white, women Democrats have consistently used dress as a way to challenge Trump’s controversial comments about women as well as his administration’s policies.</p>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ixUXqh7xErWH02UHgcLtp98aY9w=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/13740094/AP_19036789328335.jpg">
<cite>Alex Brandon/AP</cite>
<figcaption>Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY), right, is joined by other representatives wearing white, as they pose for a group photo before the State of the Union address on February 5, 2019, in Washington DC.</figcaption>
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<p id="43qzOr">Tuesday was not the first time the women of the Democratic Party have worn all white to the State of the Union; they <a href="https://www.nj.com/opinion/index.ssf/2017/03/post_192.html">first made the display in 2017</a>. At the time, Rep. Lois Frankel (D-FL) made it clear that the all-white attire was a direct response to the way the Republican Party has handled women’s issues. </p>
<p id="OjKScm">“Democratic members will wear suffragette white to oppose Republican attempts to roll back women’s progress,” Frankel announced on Twitter.</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Tonight, Democratic Members will wear suffragette white to oppose Republican attempts to roll back women's progress <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WomenWearWhite?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WomenWearWhite</a> <a href="https://t.co/lh5YAIfVGW">pic.twitter.com/lh5YAIfVGW</a></p>— Rep. Lois Frankel (@RepLoisFrankel) <a href="https://twitter.com/RepLoisFrankel/status/836670912640385025?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 28, 2017</a>
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<script async="" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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<p id="ngDvwg">Hours before the 2019 State of the Union began, the hashtag #StateOfTheWoman trended on Twitter as women lawmakers shared images of themselves in white. But on previous occasions, the members have worn other colors to make a statement about women’s issues.</p>
<p id="HBRXJg">In 2018, Democratic women <a href="https://www.racked.com/2018/1/24/16928694/congresswomen-wear-black-state-of-the-union">wore all black to the State of the Union</a>, as a tribute to the #MeToo movement and the then-recent death of activist Recy Taylor.</p>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/zhSaRocXBIkw6e9MHoSK89wyusw=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/13740160/GettyImages_1094191820.jpg">
<cite>Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>New York Rep. (D) Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (C) poses for a picture with other women ahead of US President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on February 5, 2019.</figcaption>
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<p id="7mXL4c">Since before Trump took office two years ago, he has been dogged by claims that he is insensitive to women. He has compared women to pigs, referred to news anchor Megyn Kelly “having blood coming out of her wherever,” and famously bragged about grabbing women “by the pussy” during a recorded interview with former <em>Access Hollywood</em> host Billy Bush. Attendees of the 2017 Women’s March (and the ones that followed) wore pink pussyhats in direct response to Trump’s comments. Others wore “nasty woman” T-shirts in response to Trump referring to Hillary Clinton as such during a 2016 debate.</p>
<p id="gQGdY0">While this isn’t the first year that white has been worn to Trump’s SOTU, the <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/2/5/18213047/state-of-the-union-women-in-white-suffragists">large number</a> of first-term congresswomen made the image all the more striking, and new members made the tradition their own. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) wore a white cape, while Rep. Ayanna Pressley D-MA) added a <a href="https://twitter.com/AyannaPressley/status/1092927237958103045?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet">kente cloth clutch</a> to her white jacket. </p>
<p id="aSsJvL"><em>Want more stories from The Goods by Vox? </em><a href="http://vox.com/goods-newsletter"><em>Sign up for our newsletter here.</em></a><em> </em></p>
https://www.vox.com/2019/2/5/18213087/state-of-the-union-women-in-white-democratsNadra Nittle2019-02-03T18:17:16-05:002019-02-03T18:17:16-05:00What makes a Super Bowl ad successful? An ad exec explains.
<figure>
<img alt="Doritos’s Super Bowl ads have struck a chord with fans." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/leTB5JdrmT_CDVm4V2HbjfldipU=/195x0:3310x2336/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/62932061/doritossupebowl.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>A Doritos ad plays during the Super Bowl. | Tom Pennington/Getty Images</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Super Bowl ads cost $5 million on average, but some brands still miss the mark.</p> <p id="yILS5h">A <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRRD_-4hA_g">2017 Super Bowl ad featuring a sexy Mr. Clean</a> trended on social media, became talk show fodder, and resulted in an uptick in buzz for the brand. But it did not significantly <a href="https://adage.com/article/special-report-super-bowl/super-bowl-ad-results-one-month-later/308206/">sway more customers to go out and mop their floors with the product</a>. </p>
<p id="66mFzU">Companies pay a whopping <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/super-bowl-commercials-cost-more-than-eagles-quarterback-earns-2018-1">$5 million to run a 30-second ad during the Super Bowl</a>. That lofty price tag might be worth it for some companies; after all, <a href="https://www.si.com/nfl/2018/02/04/how-many-people-watch-super-bowl-viewership-ratings">more than 111 million Americans tuned in for the big game</a> in 2018. But for others, having a commercial air during the most-watched sporting event of the year may be a bad investment. Some ads simply don’t strike a chord with customers, and others may trend on social media but still fail to inspire viewers to actually buy the product marketed. </p>
<p id="U5maf5">Smart companies do more than chase cheap laughs and passing trends on Super Bowl Sunday, according to Dan Granger, CEO and founder of Los Angeles ad agency <a href="http://www.oxfordroad.com/">Oxford Road</a>, which has worked with clients such as Hulu, Lyft, Blue Apron, DollarShaveClub, Ring, and ZipRecruiter. </p>
<p id="Ui9uLE">Granger measures what he considers to be the best and worst Super Bowl ads from an investment standpoint. Each year, Oxford Road issues a detailed report to identify which Super Bowl ads were hits and misses. The 71-measurement scoring system assesses components such as the set-up of the commercials, their value proposition, positioning, and execution. </p>
<p id="JnRBlH">“I think there is no question the single biggest waste of ad dollars across the board has to be the way the sponsors handle the investment directly correlating to business growth,” Granger says. In other words, some companies spend a ton of money on ads without a message that will actually bring them new customers. </p>
<p id="32rScH">Granger has given his expert opinion about Super Bowl commercials and other kinds of ads to publications such as the <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/0e2b4f18-02be-11e8-9650-9c0ad2d7c5b5">Financial Times</a>. I spoke with him about which ads have gotten it right and which ones fell short. Granger has also seen the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=yi3bt7J-DBE">teasers for the Super Bowl commercials</a> that will run this year and made some predictions about the ads most likely to pay off after the game airs on February 3.</p>
<p id="xuMZ6Q">Questions and answers have been edited for clarity and flow.</p>
<div id="QMQ9fH"><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 0; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.2493%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/aruHC_1NQ7M?rel=0&showinfo=0" style="border: 0; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute;" allowfullscreen="" scrolling="no" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media"></iframe></div></div>
<p id="Jsa74q"><strong>So which Super Bowl ads were the losers and winners last year?</strong></p>
<p id="5I6UC8">When we look at last year, it was a tale of two cellular service providers, [Sprint and T-Mobile]. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aruHC_1NQ7M">T-Mobile’s commercial</a> had almost nothing to do with their business or anything related to their value proposition. </p>
<p id="tcW9P0"><strong>During the commercial, a camera pans over several babies. The voiceover mentions how these babies will be “connected,” but there was no obvious link to T-Mobile as a company.</strong></p>
<p id="PsWW0o">Watching the ad, I was asking myself, “What does this have to do with my cell phone service?” But <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBx2gmFz1Yg">Sprint’s ad was on message</a> and focused. It was very masterfully delivered. </p>
<p id="Q8e9wt"><strong>What about the Sprint ad stood out to you?</strong></p>
<p id="KBxz0W">You’ve got a bunch of robots making fun of this scientist for his cell phone. (He’s using Verizon instead of Sprint.) And the old Verizon pitchman comes in at the end, and it was so cool, totally engaging. </p>
<div id="Gmtv3L"><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 0; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.2493%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/DBx2gmFz1Yg?rel=0&showinfo=0" style="border: 0; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute;" allowfullscreen="" scrolling="no" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media"></iframe></div></div>
<p id="DNbzol"><strong>Ads that stay on the message are the best investments a company can make in your opinion. But what about ads that get a lot of social media buzz, even if they don’t lead to more sales?</strong></p>
<p id="A21zRm">The problem with social engagement is if it doesn’t really correlate with strong product sales. If the brand ad is entertaining and persuasive and that triggers people to talk about it on social media, then you’ve really done a great job. But being likable and entertaining — that’s not really how you make a $5 million investment. </p>
<p id="GnqofJ"><strong>Besides the Sprint ad, what’s a 2018 Super Bowl commercial you found to be entertaining and effective?</strong></p>
<p id="SEvwCm">The <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_R2N9TJJfcA">Stella Artois ad with Matt Damon</a> was not only clever and very good, it was substantive. They were able to get your attention and call people to make an impact, so they would actually engage with the brand. Stella is asking the customer how they can do right for the brand by giving clean water to those who need it, but they’re not alienating anyone. </p>
<div id="30Vyci"><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 0; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.2493%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_R2N9TJJfcA?rel=0&showinfo=0" style="border: 0; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute;" allowfullscreen="" scrolling="no" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media"></iframe></div></div>
<p id="ApyyFx"><strong>Some </strong><a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/1/31/14453846/budweiser-super-bowl-commercial-immigration"><strong>Super Bowl ads with a social message</strong></a><strong> have caused controversy, like the </strong><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZaQQvfIfPQ"><strong>2017 Budweiser ad about the company’s founder immigrating to the US</strong></a><strong>. Some people took that as a dig at Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric.</strong> </p>
<p id="GHXx66">I think it cuts both ways with so many brands getting controversial. It can feel like people are jumping on the bandwagon of the latest PC cause. I think these sorts of commercials can be done well, but usually they’re not done. With the <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/1/15/18184072/gillette-toxic-masculinity-ad-super-bowl-feminism">Gillette ad</a>, customers said, “I don’t want to get a lesson on being a man, a husband, and a father from Gillette. I don’t come to you for my values.” Customers don’t like it when they feel they’re being beaten over the head with a message.</p>
<p id="9XPr9A"><strong>So customers tend to like fun ads the best?</strong></p>
<p id="WFJT1J">Yes, like the ad with <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ey01ZlAoYes">Doritos and Mountain Dew</a> that Peter Dinklage and Morgan Freeman did for the 2018 Super Bowl; that was a good one. [It shows them lip syncing to Busta Rhymes and Missy Elliot songs.] But ads featuring snacks and beverages have a little bit more leeway to be entertainment-driven.</p>
<div id="JyjJON"><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 0; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.2493%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Ey01ZlAoYes?rel=0&showinfo=0" style="border: 0; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute;" allowfullscreen="" scrolling="no" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media"></iframe></div></div>
<p id="0YG6JK"><strong>What about the ads for the 2019 Super Bowl? You’ve seen the teasers.</strong></p>
<p id="sK4Ntc">Yes, there’s going to be a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=yi3bt7J-DBE">Doritos ad with the Backstreet Boys and Chance the Rapper</a>. Chance awkwardly steps into the middle of the group’s dance routine. There’s some fun chemistry, and they’re using a little bit of nostalgia and somebody whose modern too. </p>
<p id="wyEwaJ">Also <a href="https://adage.com/article/special-report-super-bowl/michael-bubl-starts-bubly-s-super-bowl-ad/316281/">Michael Bublé is starring in a Bubly commercial</a>. You’ll see him in the grocery store changing the name on Bubly cans to make them say Bublé. <a href="https://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/bumble-confirms-first-super-bowl-ad-starring-their-new-global-advisor-serena-williams/">Bumble will have an ad with Serena Williams</a>, and that might get preachy. </p>
<p id="Qmx7d3">And there’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=U9U_dNo3w7k">Skittles the musical with Michael C. Hall</a>. It’s entertaining, and it should be. I don’t want Skittles to tell me what they think about the government shutdown. They need to do something fun and relevant. That’s because when I think about the Super Bowl, I think <em>America’s Got Talent</em> for brands.</p>
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https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/1/25/18197609/super-bowl-ads-commercials-doritos-sprint-skittlesNadra Nittle2019-02-01T16:40:00-05:002019-02-01T16:40:00-05:00Why Bible-inspired diets and fitness plans are catching on
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<img alt="Actor Chris Pratt made headlines after announcing that he was on the Daniel Fast." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/i20mm_oPwJSXRN21cOMy0JrDZjs=/238x0:4035x2848/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/62982505/ChrisPratt.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Chris Pratt told fans in January that as he promoted <em>The Lego Movie 2</em>, he was on the Bible-inspired dietary regimen called the Daniel fast. | Jeff Spicer/WireImage</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Ezekiel bread, the Daniel fast, and Holy Yoga all take their cues from Scripture.</p> <p id="Hykr0j">People who want to get fit, lose weight, and eat more healthfully often turn to trainers and dietitians for advice. But today, they might also to turn to a Bible-inspired or faith-based wellness program. Take actor Chris Pratt. He announced last month in an Instagram story that he was on <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/entertainthis/2019/01/11/chris-pratt-fasting-21-days-bible-inspired-diet-daniel-fast/2545946002/">day three of the Daniel fast</a>.</p>
<p id="URdTNw">“It’s 21 days of prayer and fasting,” he explained. </p>
<p id="eAyI7s">The program takes its name from the Old Testament prophet Daniel. While it’s called a fast, it does not require complete abstinence from food. Instead, “some foods are eaten while others are restricted,” according to <a href="http://www.daniel-fast.com/">the Daniel fast website</a>. Those who go on the fast hope to not only get their weight and diet under control but also draw closer to God.</p>
<p id="UcnlNL">The fast is so popular that it has spawned a book, a weight loss manual, and a study guide. There’s also the similarly named <a href="http://www.danielplan.com/">Daniel plan</a>. Developed by megachurch pastor Rick Warren, along with Dr. Daniel Amen and Dr. Mark Hyman, the plan promises a healthier life in 40 days. You can follow it by buying <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Daniel-Plan-Days-Healthier-Life/dp/0310344298">the series of books about the diet</a> and signing up for the <a href="https://danielplan21.com/">Daniel plan 21-day challenge for $89</a>; it includes workouts, coaching emails, and food planning tips. </p>
<p id="3Kdqis">Evangelicals aren’t the only ones drawn to fasting and Bible-based dietary trends. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/sep/04/silicon-valley-ceo-fasting-trend-diet-is-it-safe">Silicon Valley executives have made headlines for fasting</a> at least a few days week to supposedly improve their productivity, and talk show host <a href="https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/health/a48018/jimmy-kimmel-weight-loss/">Jimmy Kimmel fasted to drop 25 pounds</a>. Fasting in the United States <a href="https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/03/07/intermittent-fasting-diets-are-gaining-acceptance/">is becoming more widely accepted</a>, and obsession with so-called clean eating has risen so much in recent years that the name of a new eating disorder, “<a href="https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/sites/default/files/ResourceHandouts/Orthorexia.pdf">orthorexia</a>,” was coined to describe the trend. </p>
<p id="AHOvGH">The Bible, of course, was one of the earliest sources to <a href="http://web.mit.edu/jywang/www/cef/Bible/NIV/NIV_Bible/LEV+11.html">divide foods into “clean” and “unclean” </a>categories. Rabbit, for example, is considered unclean; sheep is clean. Alternative medicine expert <a href="https://draxe.com/top-10-bible-foods-that-heal/">Josh Axe has ranked biblical foods</a> like olive oil, pomegranates, and flax based on how healthful they are. And in Whole Foods, you can find <a href="https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/ezekiel-bread#section1">Ezekiel bread</a>, the sprouted whole-grain bread named for the following passage in Ezekiel 4:9: “Take wheat and barley, beans and lentils, millet and spelt; put them in a storage jar and use them to make bread for yourself.” </p>
<p id="K4YVDR">Both secular and Bible-based wellness promise to make practitioners more enlightened in some way. But full participation in either strain of wellness requires followers to spend money — be it on special foods, cookbooks, instruction guides, or other goods. </p>
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<img alt="Slices of Ezekiel bread." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/OBDvfvPXO4gUECm0eLp02sMjBKg=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/13731217/EzekielBread.jpg">
<cite>Getty Images/iStockphoto</cite>
<figcaption>Ezekiel bread, named after a Bible passage, has grown in popularity over the past decade.</figcaption>
</figure>
<h3 id="ghCqCI">How the Daniel plan made Bible wellness more mainstream</h3>
<p id="oYyBmS">Fasting has been a religious practice among a variety of faiths for millennia, but over the past decade, the trend of Bible-based wellness has <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/11/the-diet-from-god/281816/">repeatedly made news headlines</a>. It began with Saddleback Church’s Rick Warren, author of the best-seller <em>The Purpose Driven Life</em> and the pastor who did the invocation at President Obama’s 2008 inauguration. Warren hyped the Daniel plan as a weight loss diet in 2011, and 14,000 people immediately signed up for the program. </p>
<p id="RyS1o4">Warren said he dropped 60 pounds after going on the plan and giving up processed foods, instead eating plant-based alternatives. “<a href="http://danielplan.com/healthyhabits/goodfoodlist/">Good foods</a>,” according to the plan, include everything from asparagus to black beans to eggs. Shellfish should be limited, however, and meat and poultry should be free-range, organic, and void of hormones and antibiotics. </p>
<p id="CCpcfV">Warren found inspiration in the prophet Daniel, who subsisted on vegetables and water for two weeks instead of eating the forbidden foods presented to him by the Babylonian king’s court. The sacrifice was worth it, according to Scripture, as Daniel was mentally sharper and physically improved afterward. </p>
<p id="V2OFzE">The people behind faith-based wellness programs know that their followers may not be in the greatest physical shape. Warren said he noticed many of his congregants were overweight or obese. During a visit to ABC’s <em>The View</em> to promote the Daniel plan, he said the idea for the diet occurred to him after he baptized 850 people one day.</p>
<div id="QUPYQ4"><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 0; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.2493%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/l6IyBXPGRAw?rel=0" style="border: 0; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute;" allowfullscreen="" scrolling="no" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media"></iframe></div></div>
<p id="Id6kDb">“At about number 500, I had a thought go through my mind,” Warren explained. “It wasn’t a very spiritual thought: It was, ‘Good night, we’re all fat,’ and then I thought, ‘But I’m fat.’”</p>
<p id="vbYtKX">Long before the Daniel plan or the Daniel fast became trendy, Christian denominations like the Seventh-Day Adventists followed a similar diet plan. Their dietary habits have been influenced by Daniel, Adam, and Eve (believed to be vegetarians) since the 1800s. Some studies have found that <a href="https://ucdintegrativemedicine.com/2017/05/living-long-loma-linda/#gs.xGOmbHRZ">Adventists live longer </a>than members of others faiths. The Daniel fast also has similarities to Lent, when some Christians, including Catholics and Anglicans, give up foods like meat in preparation for Easter.</p>
<p id="lBcoq4">In addition to the Daniel fast, other <a href="https://www.thedailymeal.com/5-religious-weight-loss-plans">diets inspired by Scripture</a> include the “hallelujah diet,” the “maker’s diet,” and the Weigh Down Workshop. While the Weigh Down Workshop allows followers to eat whatever they want as long as they’re genuinely hungry — it’s essentially <a href="https://www.thecenterformindfuleating.org/">mindful eating</a> — many of the other Bible-inspired diet plans have been <a href="https://www.menshealth.com/nutrition/a25856780/chris-pratt-daniel-fast-bible-diet/">criticized for their extreme caloric restrictions</a>. In that way, they’re not much different from more mainstream fasts and cleanses. (Some have also accused the Weigh Down Workshop of being <a href="https://www.self.com/story/diet-spawns-a-church">akin to a “cult”</a> for its ties to a church that allegedly encourages members to cut ties with friends and family.)</p>
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</div></a><p style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;"><a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BtEawoelFDf/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_medium=loading" style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">A post shared by The Daniel Plan (@thedanielplan)</a> on <time style=" font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px;" datetime="2019-01-25T19:19:46+00:00">Jan 25, 2019 at 11:19am PST</time></p>
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<p id="J6XX8Z">There’s also the fact that once participants buy all the cookbooks, workbooks, and other accoutrements needed to follow these plans, they could be out well over $100. This is significantly cheaper than a weight loss program like <a href="https://www.jennycraig.com/">Jenny Craig</a>, which can <a href="https://www.bestdiettips.com/jenny-craig/how-much-does-jenny-craig-cost-price-list-for-2011">cost more than $500 monthly</a>. <a href="https://www.weightwatchers.com/us/">WW</a>, on the other hand, has a $20 starter fee and can cost as little as $7 weekly after that. But any number of diets cost nothing at all — not to mention that Bibles are handed out for free all the time. </p>
<h3 id="aQZmAL">What fitness has to do with faith-based wellness</h3>
<p id="REM8Lw">Bible-based wellness doesn’t stop with food. There are also several fitness and sports plans centered on Scripture. The Church Fitness <a href="http://www.churchfitness.com/">consulting firm</a> helps faith-based organizations that want fitness facilities to play a role in their ministries. In 2015, the <a href="https://www.acefitness.org/education-and-resources/professional/expert-articles/5762/10-fitness-trends-to-look-out-for-in-2016">American Council on Exercise forecast</a> the rise of faith-based fitness programs. ACE pointed out:</p>
<blockquote><p id="LuW42Z">Over the past few years, many faith-based communities have begun offering classes, nutrition advice, and health coaching to help people improve the physical and spiritual well-being of their adherents.</p></blockquote>
<p id="abx8K5"><a href="https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2010-03/free-wheel-offering">Churches have launched cycling ministries</a> as well as <a href="http://www.advocatesc.org/2011/05/archers-for-christ/">archery ministries</a> like <a href="https://centershot.org/">Centershot Ministries</a>, a Christian archery program for kids. Beyond archery programs, Christianity-based workout plans like <a href="https://www.faithfulworkouts.com/">Faithful Workouts</a> and <a href="https://praisemoves.com/">PraiseMoves</a> have grown popular in evangelical circles. PraiseMoves bills itself as an alternative to yoga and frames the practice, much like <a href="https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2018/11/15/megachurch-pastor-john-lindell-yoga-is-evil-because-hinduism-is-demonic/">megachurch Pastor John Lindell</a> does, as dangerous for Christians. The <a href="https://holyyoga.net/">Holy Yoga program takes the same approach</a>. </p>
<p id="JnQji4">Last year, Lindell <a href="https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2018/11/15/megachurch-pastor-john-lindell-yoga-is-evil-because-hinduism-is-demonic/">warned his congregation away from yoga</a> because of its non-Christian roots. </p>
<p id="abegn5">“To say the positions of yoga are no more than exercise are tantamount to saying water baptism is just aqua aerobics,” he said during a sermon.</p>
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</div></a><p style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;"><a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/Bq-GZnDA9PH/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_medium=loading" style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">A post shared by Revelation Wellness® (@revelationwellness)</a> on <time style=" font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px;" datetime="2018-12-04T15:32:03+00:00">Dec 4, 2018 at 7:32am PST</time></p>
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<p id="l6Oj41">There’s even a Christian answer to CrossFit. <a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/women/2017/november/sweatiest-bible-class-in-america.html">Revelation Wellness pairs high-intensity exercise and strength training</a> with Scripture; as participants do reps, Bible verses are read aloud. “We believe that as the body of Christ gets healthy and whole, we will be fit for our purpose — to proclaim and spread the love of God to the ends of the earth,” the Revelation website says of its mission. </p>
<p id="QfQqGq">Founder Alisa Keeton has written a book, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Wellness-Revelation-Weighs-Yourself-Others/dp/1496422473"><em>The Wellness Revelation</em></a>, to explain her philosophy. Launched in Phoenix in 2001, the program now has more than 1,000 certified instructors nationally. Training to be an instructor is cost-prohibitive for many people, though. <a href="http://www.revelationwellness.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Inquiry-Packet-2018-revised-2.pdf">Tuition can run up to $2,095</a>. </p>
<p id="6eCTPY">The surge of Bible-based diet and exercise regimens has sparked some concern. In 2014, the Daily Beast published an article that asked: “<a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/is-american-christianity-becoming-a-workout-cult">Is American Christianity Becoming a Workout Cult</a>?”</p>
<p id="eFYs26">The engineers of the Christian wellness programs that have sprung up over the past 20 years, however, view fitness as a way to transcend the physical and deepen their faith. When Christianity Today profiled Revelation Fitness in 2017, Keeton argued, “God, through loss, through discomfort, through fire, heals us. That’s how it goes beyond fitness.”</p>
<p id="r86FJg">The gospels themselves make Christianity a natural fit for the wellness trend. Scripture, after all, frames <a href="https://biblehub.com/mark/2-17.htm">Jesus as a physician who arrived to heal the sick</a>. The idea that spiritual growth leads to wellness, both physically and mentally, is one of the key components of the faith. </p>
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https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/2/1/18207293/chris-pratt-daniel-fast-daniel-plan-bible-dietsNadra Nittle