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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I was wondering if the OP was black or Hispanic. My sister married a multi-racial black man (white father, black mother, middle to upper middle class) and his mom’s side of the  family is very appearance-obsessed. The right brands, the right look/up to date clothes, hair, nails, makeup, etc. and it starts early - especially for girls. I hear a lot of “your child is an extension of you” when they talk about kids. I guess it has to do with avoiding racism or people assuming that you’re poor because of your race. [/quote]

+1. We (families of color) will be extra scrutinized if our children do not look put together. OUr parenting will be questioned. We were raised by parents who were on the extreme receiving ends of this. This is also why you will see people of color be dressed up when going to the doctor's office. [/quote]

Yup, I think this is a lot of it. When my kids look like slobs, people are like "weird hippie parents letting their kids dress themselves;" when POC's kids look like slobs, people are like "oh, those poor kids/terrible parents/probably on drugs/feed their kids crap/whatever." The double-standard is real and sucks and I totally understand why it leads some POCs to make their kids' appearances a hill to die on when I do not.[/quote]

+1[/quote]

+2. And don't let your AA daughter have a frizzy unkempt ponytail, or thick curly dry textured hair that goes flat and loses hydration and curl definition after nap time. The looks and judgment are unreal. The AA hair culture and critical comments started in preschool. This concern about "appearance" drove old-school AA families to place a 400 degree hot iron comb to edges of children to "straighten out" kinks, or worse, chemical relaxers and "kiddie perms" on 5 year olds so their hair would look like their non-black peers. We have not yet heat styled or blown our her curls, and my daughter has already lamented about it at 4. I told my daughter when people ask her why her hair is curly or "looks like that" to say, "Because this is how God made it grow out of my head, isn't it beautiful?". She has finally embraced them. But the fact that AA fros, curls, or frizz can make a black child look less "put together" than a child that has a different texture makes me very sad. The good thing is awareness around hair diversity does seem to be increasing, no where near as bad as it was when I was growing up and we had to get all of our hair products in a small special black person section of the supermarket, away from the other conditioners and shampoos.[/quote]

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