Mo Abudu calls Sky News to order over African hairstyle

Mo Abudu

Mo Abudu

TV Producer, Filmmaker and Media Entrepreneur Mo Abudu has called our attention to a derogatory publication by British news channel Sky News, depicting an African hairstyle as “Spiky coronavirus haircut’.

The yarn threading hairstyle worn by black women dates back to the 15th century, but the news agency thought it just started gaining popularity in Africa, hence the comparison with the image of the spike looking virus.

Mo as she is fondly called, shared photos of African women who have used threading on their hair, and urged every African woman to lend their voices to demand the report be corrected.

SKY News has since revised the narrative to a Kenyan hairdresser offering what she calls a ‘corona hairstyle’. Read the write up by MO and see the corrections by SKY News:

Hello beautiful people, ⁣⁣
⁣⁣
A recent publication made by @skynews on Monday 11, May 2020 titled “Spiky coronavirus haircut growing in popularity in Africa – here’s why” ⁣- has come to my attention and here’s what I have to say:⁣
⁣⁣
For starters it’s not a haircut, it’s a hairstyle!!!⁣

Hair has played a significant role in the culture of ancient African civilizations. It symbolized one’s family background, social status, spirituality, tribe, and marital status.⁣⁣

As early as the 15th century, different tribes used hair to show one’s social hierarchy. Members of royalty wore elaborate hairstyles as a symbol of their stature. ⁣⁣
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Another thing to note is that Africa is rich with ancient hair traditions and styles. African threading dated as far back as the late 15th century and is a cherished tradition among women in parts of Nigeria, Ghana, and the entire Sub Saharan Africa.⁣⁣

Generations of black women have used African Threading to style their hair and straighten it naturally. ⁣

It is disrespectful to our African culture to say this hairstyle is recently gaining popularity because of the Corona virus or it is similar to a virus which is a major devastation to the world at present.⁣

I would like all African women to send a message to #SkyNews complaining about the post and report. ⁣
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@skynews, on behalf of myself and many other African women who have shown their displeasure of this post, I would like to urge you to take this post down as soon as possible. It is derogatory and condescending to us, our forefathers, our foremothers and generations to come.⁣

For future reference, @skynews kindly #Swipeleft to see pictures from over the years that shows the beauty of African women and our traditional hairstyles.

After my post and that of many others, highlighting an exploitative, sensational and grossly inaccurate news story by @SkyNews, this morning they have made substantial changes to both the headline and narrative of the article.⁣

The original headline was about a ‘spiky coronavirus haircut growing in popularity in Africa’. By the time they took note of all our objections, it had been revised to a Kenyan hairdresser offering what she calls a ‘corona hairstyle’. I felt so strongly that a story about a local neighborhood hairdresser in Kenya had somehow grown to encompass the whole of Africa and that a centuries-old hairstyle, with a fascinating history, had been reduced to a pandemic fad.⁣

My reason for highlighting this significant retraction and revision by @SkyNews is to show that our voices have power and we must use them whenever we feel marginalized, generalized and taken for granted by Western media.⁣

This was and remains my motivation for setting up EBONYLIFE MEDIA.⁣

Further, I have added images⁣
from a number of world-class hairdressers that I know in Nigeria. They include @goodhairltd, @mywashandgo, @myextensionz_ng, @taupe_salon (Nigeria) @Blackcottongh @twistsandlocsgh (Ghana) #BeautySmithKenya (Kenya). This is to highlight, yet again, that as media we have the freedom to spin whatever we choose and you the reader must always be aware of this.⁣

Again for ease of reference I have added the picture that @skynews decided to use to tell their story compared to those I have selected to showcase world class hairdressers across the continent. I just selected a few from Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya.

55 year old MO Abudu is a philanthropist and also the CEO of EbonyLife TV, launched as Africa’s first global black entertainment and lifestyle network, in 2013.

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