Cosmopolitan’s Hot ‘New’ Braid Look is a Style Naptural85 Did Months Ago

Since posting about “boxer braids” a few months back, I’ve come across similar cultural appropriation hair tutorials and photos from non-black women. Usually, I just roll my eyes and say “here we go again”. I don’t spend too much time dwelling on the blatant hijacking of black culture, because let’s face it, it’s not going to stop anytime soon. However, when that cultural appropriation turns into me asking “did they just steal a natural hair vlogger’s tutorial and pass it off as their own?!” something has to be said.

Yesterday, Cosmopolitan posted a video with the poorly worded caption, “You’ve NEVER seen a braid like this before.” In the tutorial is a straight, blonde haired white woman getting her hair cornrowed by another white woman. They’re calling these braids, that we’ve never seen before, a “Mohawk Braid”. As if the caption of the video and style name wasn’t terrible enough, we at BGLH realized that the hair style looks VERY familiar. In fact, we are sure that we actually have seen this style before.

If you follow natural hair vlogger and veteran Naptural85 on YouTube, then you probably saw this tutorial of her ‘Edgy Twisted Office and Gym Protective Style’ in the beginning of the year. Notice any similarities between Cosmopolitan’s never before seen hair style and Naptural85’s?

Let’s see some stills.

So, at the worst, Cosmo jacked this style from Naptural85 and re-branded it (for their mostly white audience) as a hot new look. At best, they came up with the style themselves, and branded it a hot new look despite the fact black women have been doing variations on it for ages. Either way, it’s the same tired ‘Columbusing’ of black hair.