Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts with the label #MichaelaCoel

Michaela Coel: " I was trying to be someone else and failing"

#BlackEarthRising #ChewingGum  #MichaelaCoel   I n a series of videos uploaded to  Twitter  in late June, Michaela Coel sits in her bedroom amid a sea of wigs, hair creams, wig stands and preening products. She picks them up, wig after wig, bottle after bottle, and throws them with force into a black bin liner. She is done with spending hours perfectly positioning her hair, Coel tells the camera – not just the straight hair, but the curly “mixed race” hair, too, and any notion that she should look, act, think a certain way to be attractive. When we meet a couple of weeks later, Coel tells me that act of rebellion against Eurocentric beauty standards feels final. Before, she would switch between wigs and a buzz cut, depending on her mood. Today her hair is shaved down to a No 2, and on the set of the gal-dem-Guardian cover shoot, she’s wondering aloud whether she needs to go shorter. The makeup artist and stylist are not sure, but when Coel sees my hair (a 0.5...