Firstly can I start off by saying how sad it is, that she had to state that she wasn't cultural appropriating? This could be because not many people understand or know what cultural appropriation is. There's a lot of talk about cultural appropriation but no one actually explains what cultural appropriation is, so I think that's it would be a place to start off with that. Cultural appropriation can be defined as the act of taking parts of a culture without that culture getting recognition. To add on to this the culture that appropriates receives all the honour for the cultural practices, hairstyle, or even facial feature that they've taken.

A great example that people might know is the infamous Kylie Jenner. From the lips to the hair. This girl has been appropriating so much and she doesn't even know she's doing it. 

When Kylie appeared in teen vogue with dread locks they labelled them as edgy and her as trendsetter.

However when Zendaya gracefully wore her hair in dread locks to the Oscars it apparently looked like she smelt of weed...see where I'm getting at here? It isn't an issue to take cultural practices from a culture different to your own but when it's labelled as new or in style by the culture that's appropriating that's when it becomes problematic. Culture appropriation has been discussed a lot in the black community but we need to be careful that all this buzz around it does not scare non black people away from appreciating our culture and practices. 

There's NOTHING wrong with non black girls wearing braids..at all. Quite frankly I love seeing white girls with braids, considering a large amount of black girls don't see braids as a go to hairstyle but more of an exam season hairstyle (because its seen as easier to maintain than weave). Which brings me to my next point; stop comparing white girls wearing braids with black girls wearing weave. There's a big difference between cultural appropriation and imperialism. Historically White women were never taught that braids were seen as the superior hairstyle to their own where as imperialism taught black women the european standards of beauty which included hair and led to a lot of black women relaxing their hair and or getting weaves. This is NOT to say I think getting weave is wrong and in most cases today there is not an connection between a black woman's hairstyle and self hate. However in relation to black women hair is not just hair, it's a lot bigger than that..

We went from this... 

To this...

Something you also need to highlight is when Black women wear weaves it isn't branded as trendsetting or fresh rather it's seen as normal or even more attractive than natural hair/braids/dreads. Black hairstyles are seen as edgy and cool on WHITE WOMEN, white women were not taught that Black hairstyles are superior than their own and that's the key difference between cultural appropriation and imperialism.