I love SNL, but the chaos of today’s streaming landscape has made it nearly impossible for me to figure out where to watch. These days, I just catch disembodied clips on social media. This morning, I saw the hilarious Ego Nwodim on Weekend Update with Michael Che. As a lover of politics and current events, this is my favorite segment. Ego showed up as “Giselle,” a concerned businesswoman with an important warning for Black women: buy your hair extensions now before the tariffs kick in.
Sure, great. I doubled up on my last order too—it’s basic Black girl prepper logic. My bug-out bag just looks different from yours.
Then, Giselle veered into some self-deprecating humor, saying her hair was so short that a store clerk once called her Duane. It’s the kind of joke society expects from Black female comedians, a reflection of the narrow spaces we’re often allowed to occupy. Michael Che countered with examples of beautiful Black women with non-Eurocentric hairstyles: Wanda Sykes, Joy Reid, and Whoopi Goldberg. Ego’s character delivered a punchline I won’t repeat here, but she followed it with, “…You don’t want to smash them.”
No matter how you feel about the bit, there’s something deeper beneath the laughter. Ego gave voice to a very real concern. Hair is a cornerstone of beauty in the Black community. We express ourselves and our beauty through a vast range of hairstyles. A tariff on hair isn’t just about 30-inch bust-downs—it’s about braiding hair, locs, and even the products we need to maintain them. While the natural hair movement has gained traction, those products still matter.
Beneath it all is the reality that society continues to judge Black women’s beauty. Honoring our natural hair as it grows is a beautiful practice, but it takes time, effort, and patience to master—and it’s not always supported. Society’s beauty norms elevate a narrow, specific ideal, leaving the rest of us to navigate an uneven playing field.
This reminds me of a concept I developed for the book I’m writing about beauty: the pedestal and the floor. Imagine walking through a museum. On a pedestal under a spotlight sits a single piece of art. You assume it must be special, crafted by a genius—and you’re probably right. Now imagine other pieces of art leaning against the walls on the floor. You might assume those are less important, perhaps left there temporarily.
This is what happens with Western beauty standards. White women, or white-approximating women, are placed on the pedestal. It’s a narrow, high perch, and everyone is always watching. For those who fit the standard, the rewards are immense, but the fall is steep. White women are expected to fit this ideal; when they don’t, they are shamed, rejected, and blamed for failing to try hard enough.
I was reminded of this when I evacuated to Corona del Mar during the fires. Every morning at a coffee shop, I saw white women who looked nearly identical: athleisure pants (mostly Lululemon, mostly black or neutral, with the occasional blue), size 2 or smaller, long hair either tousled or in a low ponytail, and often pushing strollers with kids named Amaranth. The homogeneity was startling—I had forgotten how uniform Orange County could be.
Pasadena, where I live now, is entirely different. Here, you see women in hijab and men in capes with chickens (yes, that actually happened at my local coffee shop). It’s a vibrant, diverse tapestry of aesthetics and cultures.
But when we confront the face of the U.S. beauty standard, it’s the beach moms who dominate. They’re the treasured art pieces displayed on pedestals, kept pristine—and kept prisoner.
The rest of us, the global majority, are left on the floor. Most of us can’t reach that pedestal because the standard demands you be unclockably white—passé blanc at the very least. (Passé blanc is the Louisiana term for Black folks who passed as white.) Some climb and cling to the sides, using bleaching creams, cosmetic surgery, colored contacts, and hair relaxers.
But there’s a benefit to being on the floor: it’s expansive. There’s room to express ourselves. I ran a study years ago and found that African American women perceive more control over their bodies than their white counterparts. To me, this is reflected in the sheer variation of beauty we see in our communities: so many skin tones, body types, hairstyles, and ways of dressing.
People often ask me which is preferable—the pedestal or the floor? I say neither. Women shouldn’t exist to be viewed through society’s minimizing lens, reduced to jokes and punchlines. How others see us changes how we see ourselves, and that’s why this matters.
Ego’s bit may have started with a joke about tariffs, but it tapped into a deeper truth. From the Tignon Laws of 18th-century Louisiana to the CROWN Act today, Black women’s hair has always been a topic of conversation. It’s not just about beauty—it’s about identity, autonomy, and resilience.
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