Looks Like Marie Claire Forgot Black Women Exist (?)

By Erin Cossetta

Marie Claire tweeted about Kendall Jenner’s trend setting style of having a full head of straight hair with a few tiny braids on the side. A lot of people felt slighted by this, as if Marie Claire was suggesting Kendall was “inventing” braids. Is this systematic racism? Or is Kendall’s style different enough that it’s legitimately new? Or….. ?

The original tweet:

Kendall Jenner takes bold braids to a new epic level: http://t.co/IMPn41xorh pic.twitter.com/Cgp7X8CfNg

— Marie Claire (@marieclaire) April 2, 2014

Some of the responses:

@ohitsbarbara white people invented cornrows in 2014, y'all. @marieclaire, we melanin-abundant call that "I can't leave the house yet"

— Dani DeVito 🍉🇯🇲 (@Dani_Knope) April 2, 2014

https://twitter.com/ShonDPhoto/status/451418205668786177

https://twitter.com/ohitsbarbara/status/451419537292795904

https://twitter.com/YolieTheJew/status/451422298851905536

https://twitter.com/LaKeidraDenay/status/451424288994631680

And then Marie Claire took back their Tweet:

We didn’t mean to offend or imply that cornrows were new. Our tweet was poorly worded.

— Marie Claire (@marieclaire) April 2, 2014

We thought her hair looked great and recognize women have been styling their hair like this for ages.

— Marie Claire (@marieclaire) April 2, 2014