Kim Kardashian's cultural appropriation with braids is one thing, but let's leave her daughter's hair out of it

The often-debated topic of Kardashian hair has set the internet ablaze once again, and this time the furore was directed at both Kim and the youngest member of the clan.

One day before North West’s sixth birthday, Kim was photographed taking her first-born daughter to an ice cream parlour in New York City. But it wasn’t the little girl’s pre-birthday, her bright pink Adidas tracksuit or even Kim herself that was courting attention. Rather, it was theabsence of North’s natural curly hair. Many noticed her soft, loose ringlets had been replaced by a sleek, slicked-back, bone-straight ponytail, reminiscent of Ariana Grande circa 2016.

Of course Twitter was ready and waiting to go fully in. “Really hate how the kardashians keep straightening that poor baby’s hair...North west gonna have heat damage before she’s 10," wrote one user on the site.

The act of ridiculing a child’s appearance is, of course, problematic at the best of times. And I speak from experience when I say that there’s enough innate difficulty in navigating the parameters of a biracial identity without policing whether or not we “should” wear our hair natural or not.

Furthermore, Kim Kardashian is a well-informed, mega-rich mother who probably makes very measured choices about who styles her daughter's hair. And from the outside looking in, she isn’t doing too bad: North is sporting a luscious, full mane that’s rarely altered from its natural state.

But the furious Twitter debate that ensued following the six-year-old’s slicked-back look highlights the relevance of discussions around black hair, mixed families, cultural appropriation and identity. 

As many within the black community well know, hair has always been a highly politicised issue. It’s due in the main to the lasting legacy of a Eurocentric beauty hegemony; hundreds of years of elevating the type of hair which falls, flows and swishes over that which curls, coils or defies gravity.