Personal Is Political

Women’s bodies have always been highly politicised. So when it comes to defending our right to wear our hair however we choose, it’s about so much more than just beauty,says Ra’Eesa Pather

- Ra’Eesa Pather

She wears it cropped short. Sometimes, for a sense of adventure, the sides or the back are even shorter, leaving glimpses of naked skin. There’s one thing people think they know about a woman when her hair is this short: ‘That it’s not attached to beauty, it’s attached to other things – you’re probably political,’ says Mathahle Stofile, a freelance beauty editor and the creator of The Matte Project, a blog aimed at starting conversations with women of colour about beauty.

How women look, what we wear and even our body language is politicised. Men systemically dominate the country we live in and, because patriarchy still exists, women fight battles that are both personal and political.