'Newsweek' Writer Accuses Angelina Jolie Of Cultural Insensitivity Over Zahara's Hair

the hairstyle of 4-year-old Zahara Jolie-Pitt, the eldest daughter of actors Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.Samuels, having seen a picture of the famous youngster with hair "wild and unstyled, uncombed and dry," sees Zahara's supposedly unkempt hair as illustrative of a cultural insensivity on behalf of the Jolie-Pitts. While she admits that the Jolie-Pitts have attempted to make things easier for Zahara by hiring Beyonce's hairstylist (and name-checking Carol's Daughter products in interviews), she writes:Hair that is nice, neat, and cared for also gives African-American girls the confidence that they can fit into the world at large without being seen as completely different. One truism of childhood is that nothing is more important than being like everyone else. Well, as like everyone else as you can be with Hollywood parents. But not all people will recognize Zahara as the child of movie royalty. To many, she’ll be just a black little girl—and a black girl with bad hair at that.In recent pictures it's clear Angelina Jolie hasn’t taken the time to learn or understand the long and painful history of African-American women and hair. If she had I can’t imagine she would continue to allow Zahara to look like she has in the past few months. Photos of Zahara show the 4-year-old girl sporting hair that is wild and unstyled, uncombed and dry. Basically: a “hot mess.’’ While many out there may agree with Samuels, others are calling BS. Writer Patrice Grell Yursik, who maintains the popular beauty blog Afrobella, wrote for Black Voices: For some African American women, the expectation isn't that hair needs to be tamed into submission. For many natural hair bloggers and our readers, this world is whatever we want it to be. I'm comfortable and happy with a wash-and-go style, and I dare you to look at a natural-hair Web site like Le Coil and tell me those women look unkempt or "a hot mess." Zahara's hair, braided.Given the Jolie-Pitt family's vigilance in maintaining cultural connections between their adopted children and the countries in which they were born (Battambang-born Maddox frequently visits Cambodia), they would likely be horrified by Samuels' suggestion as well.Black hair is a particularly trendy topic this month, as Chris Rock's documentary Good Hair, which illumines the complicated relationship African-American women have with their hair, has just opened in selected theaters nationwide.