As you guys know 3ThChicWay is my baby. It started out of my love for styling and merging that with my life as Mom to Caleb & Joshua. However, if you follow me on Instagram, you know I also contribute pieces to other blogs. Recently, I was assigned to do a fashion round-up of Coachella (Beychella), for The Maria Antoinette Blog, that I contribute to twice a month. And I must confess it was a little tricky finding the images I did for that piece, let’s get into how much work goes into a blog post.
I know from the outside it looks like all we do is take pictures and try to sell products. However, when it comes to certain topics that are not speaking from a personal experience, we have to do research. For this particular assignment, I had to scour the internet/social media and find some cool looks from real people attending the festival. To keep it real with you, I was looking for black women.
So I thought this was gonna be easy, hop online and search the hashtags and voila, my piece would be written. I also happened to already be following plenty of awesome women who attended Coachella. To my surprise, (read sarcasm), black women weren’t coming up in my searches. Well, not until you scrolled all the way down in the search. We weren’t in the forefront. The same types of people in front of the Ferris Wheel, with denim cut-off shorts and a tank, were prominent. Things that make you go hmmm.
I even searched the geotag location for the fest and was coming up short as well. Like, are you kidding me? Where are the unicorn black hippies? I know they came out in numbers for Queen Bey, Cardi B, Miguel, and more. With all that’s going on in this world in 2018, why was I so surprised. Black men are getting arrested for sitting down peacefully inside of Starbucks, of course, social media outlets will promote the images they want to.
Maybe the people I am looking for didn’t tag the hashtags I was searching. Maybe they didn’t geotag their location. Maybe I was looking under the wrong tags for people that look like me. Maybe the algorithm prevented me from finding what I was looking for. Whatever it is, the fact still remains something isn’t right. Society will continue to push their standard of beauty down our throats, and if we are not aware we will be blinded by that and start to doubt our own beauty. STOP IT! So it took the better part of my day, but I found loads of our beautiful, colorful, melanated selves somewhere in between the celebrity and Ferris Wheel photos.
Next time you skim through a blog, think about the effort that went into it. The hours of research, the photography, the editing, the styling, etc. This middle finger tee is a subtle message to society and it’s standards. Representation is super important and I am so glad that at one of America’s favorite festivals, Beyoncé put on the type of performance that she did!
My posts usually take me 3-4 hours from shooting the look to coming up with the topic and research. I take every piece that has my name on it seriously, even if it isn’t necessarily saving lives, it’s something that I love doing. I love getting a message saying that something I posted inspired you, or that you loved a particular post. I can’t thank you guys enough for your support, which leads me to all these amazing opportunities. I recently signed on to contribute to another lovely Queen’s site, stay tuned for that announcement when my first post goes live over there, sometime in the near future!
Rihanna Middle Finger Tee: Groupie Tees
Metallic Skirt: Kohl’s (Other Colors Available)
White Boots: Forever 21
Boyfriend Jeans: Uniqlo
Clear Mules: Who What Wear (I had to return the ones from Missguided, and get these, wide feet problems LOL)
Thanks for reading this and anything else that I have written! As always, stay chic!
