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Beauty standards are always changing and social media has affected that. Society and social media has trained women on how to look. On instagram, the common thing these instagram models have are pretty faces and big butts and if they have those they get a lot of likes/ admirers. Many women get surgery to change how they look to get that reassurace from others.

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Social Media, Beauty Standards & Validation from Men

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This movie embraces women empowerment because we are judged pretty harshly based on our appearance. When a guy tells his mother or someone they're seeing someone the first thing they ask is for a picture or if they're pretty. This video explains the misconception of beauty and how it's changed in society. The media has taken a big toll on this.

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Nappily Ever After Review: What Is The Beauty Standard | Straight vs. Natural

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The actress explains how she felt connected to her role because we were all grown up in separate boxes. Our peers, parents shape how our society is as a whole. The disney movies portrayed false role models to us that aren't realistic to women who don't look like that. This movie tries to change that beauty standard that if you don't look like those models it's okay, just embrace who you really are.

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How Sanaa Lathan Felt Connected To Her Role In 'Nappily Ever After'

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Self esteem is being able respect yourself and accept yourself the way you are. Having self esteem allows you to be successful in work and school. Violet's self esteem gets shattered when her love interest doesn't propose to her so she loses her job and is just lost with who she is.

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What Are the Signs of Healthy or Low Self-Esteem?

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Self-esteem is your overall sense of personal value and self worth. Learn why it matters for motivation, success, and mental health.

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This movie shows how being a perfectionist isn't something that is realistic. This movie encourages people to be themselves and how it's okay to make mistakes along the way because that's the way life is. We live and learn which is the point.

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Every person works toward being the best version of themselves, but perfection is unrealistic - unless you are Violet Jones. "Nappily Ever After," the Netflix Original movie based on Trisha R. Thomas' novel, was released on Sept. 21, and shows audiences the cost of perfection is higher than it's worth.

Violet (Sanaa Lathan) is a working African-American woman who appears to have the perfect life. She is one of the best-performing employees at her advertising job specializing in beauty campaigns, and her boyfriend of two years, Clint (Ricky Whittle), is about to propose to her. She was taught by her mother, Paulette (Lynn Whitfield), that perfection will reward her. Because of this, Violet puts 100 percent into her appearance at all times and has straightened her naturally curly hair every day since she was a child.

After her boyfriend buys her a dog for her birthday instead of a wedding ring, Violet confronts Clint. She admits she expected a ring, to which Clint responds he has no intention of marrying her anytime soon. He says he barely knows anything personal about her, such as her favorite flower - something a boyfriend of two years should know about.

Violet has put all of her attention on making sure her hair looks perfect, hoping her life will reflect it. Clint is one of the first people to tell her the truth by commenting on her desire to be perfect. He tells her it was "two years of first dates" with her because she never opened up to him and focused too much on being perfect rather than a real person. This really affects Violet because she always assumed they were on the same page in their relationship and ready for marriage, but he thought the opposite.

This phrase hurts to hear as a viewer because you can see how blindsided Violet is by the statement. Although perfection is usually shown as being something to strive for, Violet's supposed perfection is actually flawed.

One of the most interesting dynamics in the show is Violet and her mother. Paulette clearly loves her daughter but constantly makes it clear that she is not beautiful unless her hair is straight. As an adult, Violet takes her mother's message to heart and puts all of her confidence in it - therefore, losing all confidence when she decides to shave her hair off.

She struggles to accept her new self in the beginning, but soon learns how less time-consuming and less stressful it is. Paulette passes out when she sees Violet's new hairstyle for the first time, as she's unable to understand why her daughter would do such a thing. At the end of the film, Violet stands up to her mother and talks about what life would be like if she accepted Violet's natural hair instead of teaching her to be ashamed of it.

Most mothers only want the best for their children, but Paulette became so caught up in appearance, she forgot to teach her daughter to love herself no matter what others said. Instead, Violet learns as an adult how to put her opinion of herself before others, even if it means losing the people you love.

This film depicts the cost of perfection in a realistic light by showing women that straight hair and fit bodies are not the definition of perfection. "Nappily Ever After" is one of the best movies Netflix released this year, as it gives audiences the representation and depiction they deserve.
culture@dailynebraskan.com

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REVIEW: "Nappily Ever After" explores perfection, self-acceptance

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Every person works toward being the best version of themselves, but perfection is unrealistic - unless you are Violet Jones. "Nappily Ever After," the Netflix Original movie based on Trisha R. Thomas' novel, was released on Sept. 21, and shows audiences the cost of perfection is higher than it's worth.

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We, as women, care too much about our appearance. We can't let our makeup get ruined, or hair get messed up but we don't stop and think about what we're experiencing in front of us. Life is too short to be hung up over small problems like that.

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Sanaa Lathan is good. She's really good. Ever since she cut off her signature bob, the actress, who's currently starring in Netflix's Nappily Ever After, isn't afraid to speak her mind. She's even sounding off on rising in the ranks of a Hollywood that at times can be unfriendly.

"Just coming up in the business, I have been treated just horribly by some women that you may know," the 47-year-old actress said Monday in a room full of women at the New York City premiere of her latest rom com inside The Wing Soho.

"I won't call any names," she said, "but when you're working with somebody who's maybe a little older than you - now I'm the older one - you don't expect to get competition, and jealousy, and weird vibes on set. And I was very hurt, very early on in my career by a couple of different women."

Thankfully, Lathan said that while portraying Lynn Whitfield's onscreen daughter, who's obsessed with being perfect - even down to the hairs on her head - for her boyfriend, she didn't have to worry about bad vibes. It was all love between her and Lynn, whom she called "a light."

"You can tell that. She's so beautiful inside and out," Lathan added.

Whitfield, who portrays Paulette Jones (the kind of mother who loves to put you in between her legs for a good press right near the kitchen stove), returned the love.

"You're only as good as the moment you create," she told Lathan. "You can't create the truth by yourself."

In Nappily Ever After, we see Lathan's Violet Jones breezing through life thanks to a high-powered advertising gig and a fine as hell live-in boyfriend. And it helps that she found a little blue box in her boyfriend's pocket. With wedding bells ringing loudly in her ears, Jones tries to keep her hair laid, in an effort to secure the ring. Don't worry feminists. Eventually Jones comes to her senses.

"I love the fact that this is a romantic comedy, but I call it the fairy tale for the modern woman," Lathan said of the flick directed by Haifaa al-Mansour, known as the first female Saudi filmmaker. "It's a romantic comedy about falling in love with yourself."

"When I was coming up, we were read fairy tales, and fairy tales is kind of what helps us determine what our values are as little girls. And when you read Cinderella ...and you don't see yourself reflected, what does that do to you on a deep unconscious self-esteem way?" the actress asked.

Lathan said she's proud Nappily Ever After represents "the beginnings of inclusivity."

The actress famously cut her hair off for the film, shot in Atlanta. The move created headlines last fall, when Lathan showed off her big chop on the 'gram. Initially, Lathan admitted, she didn't want to go there.

"In the beginning, [I said], 'I'm not cutting my hair.' I said, 'You know, this is the 21st century. We have technology. We can do a bald cap," she recalled to laughter.

But after talk with a "couple of people," including producer Tracey Bing and celebrity hairstylist Larry Sims, who made his film debut in Nappily, Lathan decided to just go for it.

"I said, 'It's just hair,'" she said. "If I don't like it I can just throw a wig on."

Similar to how the women reacted in The Wing Monday night, the glam squad and crew on set were "transformed," Whitfield said, after what will become an iconic scene of liberation and freedom.

Because for many women - even though we know better - too much value and worth are wrapped up in the strands of our hair.

"This is still an issue. It has not gone away," Whitfield said. "So I felt completely free to be this mother...who was so frightened by what this bold move would do to her daughter's life - what it would cost her."

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Sanaa Lathan: 'I Have Been Treated Just Horribly By Some Women That You May Know'

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Sanaa Lathan is good. She's really good. Ever since she cut off her signature bob, the actress, who's currently starring in Netflix's Nappily Ever After , isn't afraid to speak her mind. She's even sounding off on rising in the ranks of a Hollywood that at times can be unfriendly.

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This movie doesn't really discuss this issue but it does exist within cultures. There is a lot of discrimination based on having a certain skin color. What's considered beautiful in countries like India, Africa, and Afghanistan they make it known that being fair is considered beautiful versus darker skin color.

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How does colorism play out in America? An old children's rhyme captures the definition of colorism and its inner workings:

"If you're black, stay back;
If you're brown, stick around;
If you're yellow, you're mellow;
If you're white, you're all right."

Colorism refers to discrimination based on skin color. Colorism disadvantages people with darker skin while privileging those with lighter skin. Research has linked colorism to smaller incomes, lower marriage rates, longer prison terms, and fewer job prospects for darker-skinned people. Colorism has existed for centuries, in and out of Black America. It's a persistent form of discrimination that should be fought with the same urgency as racism.

In the United States, colorism evolved when the enslavement of people was common practice. Enslavers typically gave preferential treatment to enslaved people with fairer complexions. While dark-skinned enslaved people toiled outdoors in the fields, their light-skinned counterparts usually worked indoors at far less grueling domestic tasks.

Enslavers were partial to light-skinned enslaved people because they often were family members. Enslavers frequently forced enslaved women into sex, and the light-skinned children of enslaved people were the telltale signs of these sexual assaults. While enslavers didn't officially recognize their mixed-race children, they gave them privileges that dark-skinned enslaved people didn't enjoy. Accordingly, light skin came to be viewed as an asset in the community of enslaved people.

Outside the United States, colorism may be more related to class than to white supremacy. Although European colonialism has undoubtedly left its mark worldwide, colorism is said to predate contact with Europeans in Asian countries. There, the idea that white skin is superior to dark skin may derive from ruling classes typically having lighter complexions than peasant classes.

While peasants became tanned as they labored outdoors, the privileged had lighter complexions because they didn't. Thus, dark skin became associated with lower classes and light skin with the elite. Today, the premium on light skin in Asia is likely tangled up with this history, along with cultural influences of the Western world.

Enduring Legacy

Colorism didn't disappear after the institution of slavery ended in the U.S. In Black America, those with light skin received employment opportunities off-limits to darker-skinned Black Americans. This is why upper-class families in Black society were largely light-skinned. Soon, light skin and privilege were linked in the Black community.

Upper-crust Black Americans routinely administered the brown paper bag test to determine if fellow Black people were light enough to include in social circles. "The paper bag would be held against your skin. And if you were darker than the paper bag, you weren't admitted," explained Marita Golden, author of "Don't Play in the Sun: One Woman's Journey Through the Color Complex."

Colorism didn't just involve Black people discriminating against other Black people. Job advertisements from the mid-20th century reveal that Black people with light skin clearly believed their coloring would make them better job candidates. Writer Brent Staples discovered this while searching newspaper archives near the Pennsylvania town where he grew up. In the 1940s, he noticed, Black job seekers often identified themselves as light-skinned:

"Cooks, chauffeurs, and waitresses sometimes listed 'light colored' as the primary qualification-ahead of experience, references, and the other important data. They did it to improve their chances and to reassure white employers who...found dark skin unpleasant or believed that their customers would."

Why Colorism Matters

Colorism yields real-world advantages for individuals with light skin. For example, light-skinned Latinos make $5,000 more on average than dark-skinned Latinos, according to Shankar Vedantam, author of " The Hidden Brain: How Our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars and Save Our Lives."﻿﻿ A Villanova University study of more than 12,000 Black women imprisoned in North Carolina found that lighter-skinned Black women received shorter sentences than their darker-skinned counterparts.﻿﻿ Research by Stanford psychologist Jennifer Eberhardt found that darker-skinned Black defendants were twice as likely as lighter-skinned Black defendants to get the death penalty for crimes involving white victims.﻿﻿

Colorism also plays out in the romantic realm. Because fair skin is associated with beauty and status, light-skinned Black women are more likely to be married than darker-skinned Black women. "We find that the light-skin shade as measured by survey interviewers is associated with about a 15 percent greater probability of marriage for young Black women," said researchers who conducted a study called "Shedding 'Light' on Marriage."﻿﻿

Light skin is so coveted that whitening creams continue to be best-sellers in the U.S., Asia, and other nations. Mexican-American women in Arizona, California, and Texas have reportedly suffered mercury poisoning after using whitening creams to bleach their skin. In India, popular skin-bleaching lines target both women and men with dark skin. That skin-bleaching cosmetics persist after decades signals the enduring legacy of colorism.

Additional References

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The Origins of Colorism and How This Bias Persists in America

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How does colorism play out in America? An old children's rhyme captures the definition of colorism and its inner workings: "If you're black, stay back; If you're brown, stick around;If you're yellow, you're mellow;If you're white, you're all right." Colorism refers to discrimination based on skin color.

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Women have to go through a lot to get ready for the day. From hair to make up to dressing a certain way. I wouldn't say we do it to impress others but we do get treated differently when we look certain way.

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1. Uncut Gems Is a Trip Deep Into Your Tolerance for Adam Sandler

2. Bombshell Tries, Fails to Make the Women of Fox News Feminist Heroes

3. Richard Jewell Turns a True Story Into a Libertarian Fable

4. The 10 Best Movies of 2019, Plus the Best of the Decade

Six years ago, Haifaa al-Mansour became the first female filmmaker in Saudi Arabia. , about a 10-year-old girl whose desire to ride a bike is met with near-unanimous opposition, was filmed, occasionally in secret, during the country's 35-year ban on movie theaters. (The prohibition was lifted earlier this year, with a screening of Black Panther kicking off a new era of Saudi Arabian film culture.) In the meantime, al-Mansour has followed up her BAFTA-nominated feature debut with two feminist-themed projects: a tepidly received 2017 biopic about Frankenstein author Mary Shelley starring Elle Fanning and, now, the earnest Netflix romantic comedy Nappily Ever After.

Al-Mansour is both a natural and highly imperfect pick to adapt Trisha R. Thomas' novel. Nappily Ever After opens with its thirtysomething protagonist, Violet (played as an adult by Sanaa Lathan and as a child by Gabrielle Manning), as an 11-year-old girl at a pool party, forbidden by her mother (Lynn Whitfield) from getting in the water lest her straightened hair curl into its natural state. Violet jumps in anyway, and several white children promptly make fun of the "Chia Pet" on top of her head. In both Wadjda and Nappily Ever After, girls are never free of gendered pressures, and mothers are complicit in pushing their daughters into socially desirable molds of femininity. (These mothers may not agree with patriarchy's decrees, but they recognize the institution's potential for punishing wayward women.) But three decades of pursuing perfection has left Violet a gorgeous shell of a person, with nary a hot-combed hair out of place, as well as an entitled jerk when she doesn't receive the rewards she believes her beauty owes her-namely, an engagement to Clint (Ricky Whittle), the doctor she's been dating for two years.

So far, so universal. But Nappily Ever After, as its title suggests, is also about a black woman's journey toward embracing herself and her hair-so much so that her obligatory second love interest, Will (Lyriq Bent), is a hairdresser. Is single dad Will-whose last name is Wright-always meant to be right? A natural hair advocate who compares straightening black hair to "putting down an animal," he evinces an evangelist's manic zeal in his attempts to convert Violet to the gospel of nonrelaxed curls. When he spots a near-bald Violet after she shaves her head in a drunken fugue-more on this later-he asks, a little too self-importantly, "Didn't the hum of the clippers sound like Harriet Tubman calling you to freedom?" To the end, Nappily Ever After is ambivalent about Will's boosterism, which leaves the film with a self-aware twist on the rom-com template but also with the feeling that the director might not know exactly what she wants to say about her story's central topic.

Al-Mansour is both a natural and highly imperfect pick to adapt Trisha R. Thomas'novel.

It's not that a nonblack filmmaker categorically cannot tell Violet's story. A powerful scene in which our blotto protagonist shears off her unwanted hair experiment-Lathan mowing down her tresses in close-up-is easily the movie's emotional and visual centerpiece. Lathan laughs, and cries, and can't stop looking at herself in the mirror. We're happy for Violet's cathartic purge-a change that's been in the making pretty much all her life-but also more than a little worried: It's 100 percent guaranteed she'll regret her impulsive act in the morning, if she even remembers it. (The first thing Violet does when she wakes up: She screams. A lot.)

Netflix doesn't release viewership numbers, but Nappily Ever After appears to have become a conversation piece as soon as it was released on Friday. Still, that doesn't mean it's been widely embraced. The #NappilyEverAfter hashtag, for instance, reveals many passionate partisans both pro and con. Black critics, meanwhile, have noted that the film feels about a decade too late for the natural hair movement and have criticized Hollywood's overreliance of natural hair as a metaphor for authenticity. Not mincing words, Vulture writer Angelica Jade Bastién pilloried the film's " reductive understanding of black womanhood."

Though broad and unsubtle, Nappily Ever After isn't without several notable assets. It features an assured and emotionally complex performance from Lathan, who imbues Violet with personality and prickliness even when Adam Brooks and Cee Marcellus' screenplay fails her. Atlanta looks lush and inviting bathed in cinematographer Alar Kivilo's warm light. A chaste but intensely erotic scene in which Will gives Violet the one touch she'd never allowed herself to enjoy-a scalp massage, in public, no less-should alone assure the film's place in some kind of rom-com pantheon. Most saliently, Violet's gradual realization that she's been taught to please others rather than develop her selfhood-and her corresponding longing for the freedom that Will's preteen daughter, Zoe (newcomer Daria Johns), enjoys-is empathetically balanced by compassion for the older women whose strict enforcement of gender roles originates from (self-)protective instincts.

Straightened hair isn't the only way Violet is taught to be ladylike. She also learns from her mother to smile and to never complain, even when her stilettos are cutting into the back of her feet. At a party thrown in her honor, she refuses food. These details suggest that an obsession with hair is to al-Mansour as much a symbol of gendered oppression-one of the countless ways women are told to monitor their behavior and appearance-as it is a distinct issue millions are contending with every day. Is Nappily Ever After cinematic nourishment meant for all women, or an outsider's fumbled attempt at making a culturally specific and highly sensitive subject accessible to a wider audience? Your individual answer might depend on whether you see society's treatment of black hair as a symbol of something larger or as an issue that's all too big in itself.

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Netflix's Nappily Ever After Is Smarter About Womanhood Than It Is About Black Hair

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Uncut Gems Is a Trip Deep Into Your Tolerance for Adam Sandler Bombshell Tries, Fails to Make the Women of Fox News Feminist Heroes Richard Jewell Turns a True Story Into a Libertarian Fable The 10 Best Movies of 2019, Plus the Best of the Decade Six years ago, Haifaa al-Mansour became the first female filmmaker in Saudi Arabia.

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I believe women struggle with self confidence and it starts at a young age and we see that in the movie with Violet. I can relate to Violet because I looked different from everyone else in my school and I got picked on for it and it made me feel miserable. I did try to change myself to gain that confidence but it was always short term because that was never who I initially was.

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Why would anyone follow a leader with no self-confidence? They wouldn't.
Do women struggle with self-confidence more than men? Yes.
Then why are we surprised when there aren't as many female leaders as male leaders in our businesses and society? We shouldn't be.

Now, I know very well that moving women into more leadership positions is a bit more complicated than this and I'm not trying to suggest an easy fix to women's inequality... but I am saying that for too long women have "bought" the stories society has told us about how we "can't lead like a man" (which, by the way, research says is true) and that "leading like a woman won't work" (which, by the way, research says is not true.)

The truth is we can do a lot more ourselves to build our confidence levels that will give us credibility on the leadership track.

Do women actually manage business risk better than men, and personal risk worse? Research says: Yes.
Can we learn to apply this kind of risk-management skill we use so effectively in business to ourselves? Absolutely! - Click To Tweet

6 Steps To Building Self-Confidence For Women

Too many aspiring women leave the development of this critical skill to chance when in fact, confidence is one of the easiest leadership skills to build all by yourself. You don't need anyone else's permission or consent to get started. Great leaders figure this out along the way, so why not get a leg up on the intuitive process they use?

It starts by understanding what confidence really is. Confidence is not the secure knowledge you'll never goof up. Confidence is knowing "pretty much" what to expect and knowing how to handle it. You have to build confidence by learning what happens in certain situations, and by practicing responses until you find out what works and what doesn't. You can't think your way into confidence - you have to act.

Here's a simple 6-step recipe for confidence building, and it works for the CEO as well as for the entry level post-grad:

1. Identify an area you don't feel confident in. This can be a skill (like communicating unhappy news in ways that spur innovation) or an area of substantive knowledge or capability (like knowing the ins-and-outs of your industry's seasonal market dynamics).

2. Identify the edge of your comfort zone. Just fill in these blanks: I feel confident that I know/can do ________________ but I'm not confident I know/can do _______________.

3. Identify something you can DO within the next week to act just outside your comfort zone. Can you call on an expert to review what you think you know? Can you go to a meeting and make a contribution "out of the zone"? Can you take someone specific to lunch and be "out of the zone" in your conversation? Can you open your mouth and say something you wouldn't have said before to the next person you meet? Commit to doing it and then do it.

1. Notice what really happens. This is the hard part. Don't just notice what confirms that you're outside your comfort zone. You knew you'd find that kind of feedback when you stepped over the line. Pay attention to it and learn from it, but most importantly notice the other stuff - the feedback that shows you what you DO know and what you're doing right. That's what you want to build on and do more of in the future. And don't worry about looking stupid. Just learn as you go and you'll never look stupid; people appreciate your transparency and honesty - especially if you're the boss!

2. Plot to do it again. Go from the scary place outside your comfort zone to your happy place back inside the zone and have a cup of coffee or a jog on the treadmill. Relax and noodle on what really happened, focusing on what went right. Reflect also on what went wrong and let go of any emotional residue from it (remember, you asked for it). If anything at all went right (and it almost always does), you just moved the line of your comfort zone a little bit farther out.

3. Repeat. Over and over, focusing on the small things. Once you get this process down on the small things, the big things become a whole lot easier.

No matter how high up we get, we all have more outside our comfort zone than within it. Develop the habit of expanding your comfort zone and you're on the path to becoming a very confident leader in ways that are authentic to you and incorporate your feminine style.
Looking for personally authentic strategies to help you build your confidence or explore self-confidence for women more deeply? Schedule a free executive coaching consultation with Dana to help you think of new possibilities.

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6 Steps to Authentic Self Confidence for Women

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Why would anyone follow a leader with no self-confidence? They wouldn't. Do women struggle with self-confidence more than men? Yes. Then why are we surprised when there aren't as many female leaders as male leaders in our businesses and society? We shouldn't be.

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Violet's love interest tells her that "brothers want a woman who is real" because throughout the movie the audience can notice her being superficial and very tense with who she is. Everything had to be a certain way. As you get deeper in the movie, she becomes outgoing and laid back with everything around her.

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Violet Jones ( Haifaa al-Mansour 's Nappily Ever After, based on a novel of the same name by Trisha R. Thomas, chronicles journey from the pursuit of superficial perfection to a search for emotional honesty and self-love. Sanaa Lathan) and her

Nappily Ever After uses Violet's relationship with her hair to connect to her relationship with femininity, presentation, and authenticity. It begins from a young age, as we see in flashbacks that begin in Atlanta 1993, with chapters separated by descriptions of the state of Violet's hair ("Straightened", "Weave", "Blonde", etc.). She begins, as far back as childhood, with her hair constantly straightened, put together, under control.

She believes her buttoned-up beauty, behavior, and career success makes her the perfect woman, and most importantly thinks that will be enough to earn a proposal from her almost-doctor boyfriend Clint ( never comes. After a series of emotional catastrophes (and changes in the state of her hair, of course), Violet shaves her head, which sends her on a path of discovery. Ricky Whittle - distractingly handsome), which

Despite the film's strong performances, its themes feel condescending and judgmental. Violet feels like an archetype meant to represent women trapped by society's expectations of her, not a fully formed character, and Nappily Ever After feels like a morality tale that holds the viewer's hand at every turn, stating and overstating its intended message until its meaning feels empty.

"I've worked so hard to be everything he wanted."

shaving her head at her lowest emotional point. Violet's emotional explanation to her mother at the end of the film, in general - Nappily Ever After doesn't dig as deeply as it could, and, this may be a genre convention more than anything else, never allows itself to get ugly. Possibly the only exception is an impressive single take shot of Lathan, distraught, Lathan, grounds this film in a level of sincerity that would be lost without her.

The marks of adaptation, in general, weaken the film. Voiceover in the start begin the theme of oversimplification and hand-holding that persist throughout the film. For example, when Violet's voice over explains that "To [her] mom, appearance was everything", it feels as though the film doesn't trust its audience enough to glean that through filmmaking. Musical cues, as well, are over-used to attempt to create an emotional intensity that simply isn't there.

In general, the film stands by genre hallmarks - an overbearing mother obsessed with her daughter's physical appearance and ability to attract the perfect man, a perfect man that turns out to be less than perfect, a second man that sees the "real Violet", and a demanding job at which the protagonist must prove herself using the lessons she's learned throughout the film.

The strongest element, and one of the most original, is the connection between Violet and a young girl named Zoe ( Daria Johns), the daughter of Violet's hairdresser, romantic interest, and natural hair supporter Will Wright ( Lyriq Bent). It allows something else to define Violet other than her relationship to her hair, and thus strengthens and complicates her as a character.

"Real women, no models."

There is a strangely regressive feminism that drives Violet's journey, and almost mockingly critiques her behavior. She is punished by the story for ordering a salad, for wearing heels to a date, for expecting a proposal from her boyfriend. All of this is "wrong" within the narrative, but why? It is a strangely regressive feminism that equates behaving in a way that is "too feminine" with a lack of freedom and self-confidence. "What brothers want is a woman who's real," Will tells Violet, as if the preceding behaviors are emblematic of her lack of authenticity.

The film seems to not know how to explore Violet's emotional walls any more deeply than with issues involving a singular incident in her childhood, and simply doesn't. The classism that Violet's mother propagates, for example, against people in Violet's life that don't match Violet's mother's image of financial success, is a far more interesting issue, but is largely unexplored.

For many black women, forgoing extensions, weaves, wigs, and chemicals can be a defining one, and this seems to be understood on a basic level, but not explored with the nuance these issues deserve. At one point Violet says: "I was so used to looking at myself in the mirror all the time, but now I never do." She still wears stylish outfits, well-applied makeup, and lives in a beautifully, expensive apartment. She is still traditionally feminine, formal, and well-dressed. The assertion that without her hair her entire philosophy toward her presentation, and therefore her life, has changed, seems oversimplified and disingenuous.

Nappily Ever After: Conclusion

Every relationship, every conflict, every emotional beat, is driven by Violet's relationship to hair, and this very quickly feels condescending to the character and the intended audience, likely other Black women. Every discussion about Violet's growth is focused more on her outward presentation rather than the underlying emotional insecurities she faces, and what begins as encouragement that Black women embrace their natural beauty feels like a judgmental criticism of women who put effort into their appearance or present as too feminine or too high maintenance.

Strong performances and solid filmmaking can only slightly elevate an otherwise shallow examination of a cultural issue.
What can be done to enliven depictions of women while staying in line with the genre conventions of the romantic comedy? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below! Nappily Ever After was released on Netflix on September 21, 2018.
Opinions expressed in our articles are those of the authors and not of the Film Inquiry magazine.

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NAPPILY EVER AFTER: An Exploration Of Beauty That's Shallow & Judgmental | Film Inquiry

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Violet Jones ( Haifaa al-Mansour 's Nappily Ever After, based on a novel of the same name by Trisha R. Thomas, chronicles journey from the pursuit of superficial perfection to a search for emotional honesty and self-love. Sanaa Lathan) and her Nappily Ever After uses Violet's relationship with her hair to connect to her relationship with femininity, presentation, and authenticity.

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This movie shows how everyone wore a mask and had no conflict with others because everyone looked the same. Once she took it off everyone was surprised and made comments about it. Nappily Ever After is similar to this because in the beginning when she was a little girl her hair was straight until she went in the pool and her hair got curly and people made comments.

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Identity SHORT FILM (Award Winning Inspirational Short)

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This movie really spoke to me even though I'm not black however it made me realize how important it is to be myself and be proud of where I come from. I wouldn't want my traumas as a child to be passed on to my kids and have them struggle with identity in the future.

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Review: 'Nappily Ever After' has a muddled message - The Diamondback

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The Netflix film loses its way along the inspirational story line.

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The main character was struggling with being herself and expressing who she really is. She was brainwashed at such a young age to wear a mask and be someone who her mother wanted her to be. Her role model was her mother, who went through the same thing when she was little.

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Let Her Finish  EP #1 | Gender Roles| Nappily Ever After| and a whole lot of don't touch my hair!

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This movie talks about how important it is to be comfortable in your own skin. The main character tries to be someone who she's not. She doesn't like to embrace her natural roots.

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It's been at least a decade since the natural hair movement re-emerged, bringing with it new and old ways for black people to accept the tresses they were born with. Words like "nappy" - historically a pejorative reference to the texture of black hair, particularly those of a coarser, tightly coiled texture, such as my own - and "kinky" have been reclaimed as positive terms by many black women. And there has been a recent influx of on-screen representations of the movement too.

Films like Black Panther famously championed natural hairstyles, and British naturalista bloggers are more prominent now than ever before. But that doesn't necessarily mean the stigma surrounding natural hair has disappeared with it.

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In one of the latest Netflix original films, Nappily Ever After, which follows Violet Jones (played by Sanaa Lathan) - a seemingly "perfect" advertising executive with an obsessive need to keep up appearances, especially where her bone-straight hair is concerned - we see that often arduous journey towards natural hair acceptance. After a disastrous trip to the hairdresser, Lathan'scharacter is forced to undergo the big chop - a path some women choose to take while others, such as myself, wait for it to transition back to its natural state - as well as the rejection of Eurocentric beauty standards, which suggest that straight, flowing hair is respectable, while thicker, curlier textures are "unkempt", "unprofessional" and even "political".

A few weeks back in the UK, for example, a 12-year-old Rastafarian boy won a case against his school, where he had been banned because of his dreadlocks. Although he is now, after a lengthy legal battle, able to return to school without shaving his hair, it's clear that this is just one of many examples of how black hair is adversely characterised across several institutions.

Like Lathan's character in the film, I too held onto stereotypes of natural hair. I routinely had my hair cornrowed up until secondary school, where I gave in to the stereotype of natural hairstyles being childish. I also felt I didn't know how or have time to care for my hair, so I chemically relaxed it, which caused significant hair damage over the years. So much so that in my last year of university I finally took the plunge to go natural by letting my hair grow out without the use of chemical straighteners. But it wasn't just the damage that led to such a significant change; the YouTube natural hair community was a huge contributor to me deciding to keep my hair in its natural, "nappy", and, I was coming to learn, wonderfully unique state.

Seeing a host of people embrace their hair and empowering others through their platform was a huge source of encouragement. Bloggers such as Fusion of Cultures and HalfricanBeaute showed me the variety of hairstyles and products to discover for effective haircare. Alongside this movement, as shown in Nappily Ever After, there has been an increase of organic products that support healthy growth, which makes a nice and necessary change from the often chemically dangerous products commonly marketed towards black women.

To repeat an often used phrase when it comes to combating internalised racism - representation is important. Through celebrities such as Lupita Nyong'o and Janelle Monáe wearing their afro-textured hair in public, coupled with increasing media attention and films like Nappily Ever After, a strong culture of natural hair acceptance can be formed globally.

As mentioned in the movie, it's not that black women should feel guilty about wearing anything other than natural hair, whether it's weaves, wigs or other protective styles. Rather, it's that they should know that their natural hair is just as beautiful as any other type, and they are worthy of respect regardless of how they choose to wear their hair.

Better natural hair visibility in media and beauty platforms can be incredibly helpful in promoting self-acceptance, and black women like me are proof of that.

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'The natural hair movement may have improved afro hair acceptance, but films like Nappily Ever After are still needed more than ever'

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It's been at least a decade since the natural hair movement re-emerged, bringing with it new and old ways for black people to accept the tresses they were born with.