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Two summers ago, I sat in the basement of my house writing “East Coast Demerara” in Sharpie on barrels waiting to be shipped. I’d only been to my  parents’ birthplace twice (once as an infant and again as a teenager), but despite the physical distance from Guyana, my Guyanese ancestry has been a close and powerful force throughout my life. Family conversations are peppered with vocal inflections and, between mouthfuls of peas and rice, puri, and chicken foot, we speak slanted English, patwa. My relationship with Guyana mirrors Guyana’s relationship with the Caribbean; though the country is technically a part of South America, culturally, it has more in common with Haiti and Trinidad and Tobago. Even from afar, we remain close.

Without making annual trips to Guyana, I still have a constant connection with the country through an unexpected channel: hand-me-down clothing. Over the years, tall brown or blue cylinders with plastic covers have taken up space in my basement. We pack them to the brim with new and worn clothes, as well as toys, school supplies, and household items. Even my Grandma Ruby, at 82 years old, makes sure to send barrels back home to the Nabaclis village where she raised my uncles. In 1970, when she was 32 years old, Ruby left her children in Guyana to come to America to find work so she could earn enough money to send for her entire family, a labor trend that has contributed to the influx of Caribbean immigrants in New York City that now makes up at least two-fifths of the City’s population, according to a study referenced in Nancy Foner’s Islands In The City. 

My family, like many other immigrants, grew up in a country where the opportunities were scarce but the talent abundant. That ecosystem equipped them with frugality mindsets. They turn off lights behind their American-born children because, back home, they were lucky if they had a flambo, a kerosene lamp. They fret over their children’s needs to own more than two pairs of shoes because they remember what it was like to share shoes with their siblings. Sustainability is not a cute word used to describe the plastic bags balled up under sinks or the tomato sauce jars used to store green seasoning and achar. They are simply the patterns of necessity many families have grown up with, a flex of their creativity and ability to preserve. “Caribbean immigrant families are being sustainable without even knowing,” explained 20-year-old Kaliyah Bennett, whose family is from Jamaica. Bennett remembers her grandmother helping her and her cousins step on top of their barrel to shut it. 

Clever marketing and slick fashion campaigns can lead us to believe that sustainable fashion is new, luxurious, and justifiably overpriced. But Caribbean families and other immigrant groups in the States have been practicing it for generations. This “new age” of fashion sustainability is unfashionably late to the party. 

For many Caribbean families, practicing sustainability “the American way” has become a trap. Wear the “right” sustainable clothes and receive praise; wear the “wrong” ones, and be seen as pitiable.

When we treat sustainability as a luxury commodity, instead of a cultural practice, we make it less accessible. Visible displays of sustainability — and the moralistic high horse that comes with them — has become yet a status symbol. Compounded with the increasingly cheap prices of fast-fashion, sustainability becomes a practice that only the privileged can engage with. The message the industry sends is cynical: If you can’t afford to be sustainable, you are inconsiderate, even immoral.

For many Caribbean families, practicing sustainability “the American way” has become a trap. Wear the “right” sustainable clothes and receive praise; wear the “wrong” ones,  and be seen as pitiable.

For Imani A Islam whose family is originally from Trinidad, secondhand clothes came to represent an otherness to non-Caribbeans she couldn’t shake. Even though thrifting has become a fad for many who can afford to shop elsewhere, Islam still associated pre-worn clothes with being un-American. Being the child of immigrants is a balancing act: We teeter between embracing our parents’ cultural quirks and disavowing them for trends that obscure our otherness. Like many, she was more impressed with new clothes over “knock-offs” but her thoughts changed when she realized secondhand clothes came with a responsibility to treasure the memories woven into them. “Now, hand-me-down clothes make me feel that I’m receiving something that could potentially have been lost. I’m [not only] excited about how I’ll be able to add it to my wardrobe to enhance an outfit I plan on wearing, [but also about] passing it on later on when I have my own children,” she explained.  

To the diaspora, secondhand clothes are much more than an act of goodwill. They’re a tether to culture. “I always marveled at the urgency at home when we knew the ‘Barrel Man’ was coming to tape and pick up our barrel to send off to the DR,” said Delanisse Valdez, a 22-year-old Domincan who grew up in Brooklyn, who learned about sustainability from her family. “It felt like we were teleporting emotional parts of ourselves to another country.” Her grandmother, with her seamstress skills, reimagined old clothes into new styles.  Her consciousness regarding sustainability wasn’t just tied to ecological and economic reasons, but also cultural ones. Used clothes were an opportunity to sustain a connection with her family in the Dominican Republic.

“Growing up in Brooklyn was basically like growing up in a mini Caribbean. All of my friends at school were from St. Lucia, Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados, Dominican Republic, and other islands. We’d always talk amongst each other about the intersection of our family experiences regardless of being from different islands in the Caribbean. I’d later come to understand what the Black Diaspora was and how these small interpersonal interactions like shipping barrels out to family, are happening on such a grand scale as well,” said Valdez.

When 27-year-old Mani Claxton, whose family is from St. Kitts, moved in with her boyfriend in 2016, whose family is from Haiti, she wanted to ingratiate herself to this new family. In Caribbean culture, it’s damn near sacrilegious to show up to someone’s house for the first time without a gift of some kind; you grow up knowing not to show up with your two long hands, and Claxton’s grandmother made sure her granddaughter didn’t arrive empty-handed. But when Claxton showed up with a trash bag full of clothes, it turned out that her boyfriend’s grandma already had four barrels to send back to Haiti. Claxton knew she was home.

[Secondhand clothes] is about knowing you are provided for; that there is always someone in your corner looking out for you to make sure that, at the bare minimum, you look your best — because, if nothing else, you’ll go out in the world looking like your people.

For some, receiving secondhand clothes and wearing them is a loud proclamation of what you lack, but for the Caribbean women who immigrate to the city, these clothes are a proclamation of all that they have — namely, their rich community. When Camryn Bruno, of Afro-Trinidadian descent, was growing up, she knew that before she went shopping at clothing stores like Rainbow and Dresses for Less on Merrick Boulevard and Jamaica Ave in Queens, her first destination for a new outfit would be her step-cousin’s closet. “It’s really a joy to repurpose clothes back into our communities so we can reduce waste. Thrifting is becoming the cool thing to do nowadays.” Barrel children like Bruno are also equipped to tap into the skill inherent in reusing clothes: “[It’s provided] youth with an option to create small businesses and get revenue,” she says. In her eyes, seeing Gen Z take an active part in this cultural experience is a big step in the direction of financial literacy and building community.

And the beauty of passing down clothes flows in both directions. It’s common for my aunt to rush me into her room to pull out a shirt, skirt, or shorts that don’t fit her anymore. The excitement on her face as she envisions the piece on me makes it clear that this practice, at its core, is about love and selflessness. It is about thinking of someone outside yourself and wanting to enrich their lives. It is about knowing you are provided for; that there is always someone in your corner looking out for you to make sure that, at the bare minimum, you look your best — because, if nothing else, you’ll go out in the world looking like your people. 

While Caribbean immigrants have been finessing their fashion on a budget, fashion should take notes from afar. Sustainability is not a “trend” or exclusive product. It should be an expected, accessible, community-based practice that feels good to participate in.

“People need to understand that everything you buy or eat is brought to you by centuries of colonization,” explained the writer Aja Barber, whose work exposes the many interconnected faults within the fashion industry that keeps people — especially poor Black women — on the margins. “For so long, sustainable fashion has been incredibly white. It has highlighted people with the most amount of privilege and power for seemingly good deeds while ignoring that people of color and those without funds are harmed the hardest by the system and not even doing the bulk of the damage.” 

Barber’s heritage also primed her for her work. “I have family in St. Thomas Virgin Islands, and [sending barrels home] was definitely a practice we engaged in. But it wasn’t just the Caribbean family, it was all of our family up and down the Eastern Seaboard.  We grew up wearing so many hand-me-down from cousins and family friends as well. A friend recently posted a photo of herself on Facebook wearing pink shortalls and I remarked that I had the same ones — and they were hers! I generally think people with the least amount of privilege and power have always engaged in this practice, and nobody gave it a title. Unfortunately, throughout much of my life, secondhand clothing made you the butt of many jokes. I’m glad it’s becoming more of the norm, but we probably need to talk about how the world demonized so many marginalized people for this practice.”

Sustainable fashion should not be overpriced or marketed as a new phenomenon. My family proves it works when it’s not. When your community is taken care of by its members, there is incentive to look out for those growing up after you. The pride I have in my culture is evident in my speech, my mannerisms, and every pre-worn garment I put on. Sustainability, in homes like mine and the people I spoke to, was born out of necessity, appreciated as a sign of success, and nurtured through generations as a symbol of unlimited care and inventiveness. Sustainability works and sticks when it’s tied to real communities, real families, and real cultures instead of just an expensive badge of moral superiority. For sustainability to succeed — and we need it to succeed — we have to be real about the spaces where it’s already flourishing and where it has not.

After all, it’s my community, not the fashion establishment, who unequivocally sees a barrel of used clothing as a thing of beauty, because it truly is. 

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“Climate change is not just a white people problem,” Heizal Nagginda explained as she detailed the conversations she’s had within her Ugandan community — and she’s right. It’s an issue all of humanity has to work against since years of commercial drilling, deforestation, and clogging our oceans with waste impacts us all, and Black women are leading the cause.

When a movement dedicated to saving the planet and all its inhabitants doesn’t reflect the diversity of the planet, it’s clear we have an imbalanced equation. For so long the environmental justice movement has been posited as a white movement because of the assumption that Black people aren’t aware or don’t care about the environment or the consequences of environmental injustice. That’s simply not true. 

The myth that Black people don’t have vested interest in their environment and community’s health is perpetuated in moments like Professor Dorceta Taylor recounting how she was dismissed in a conversation by a white male colleague before she gave her keynote address, only to have him quickly approach her to attempt damage control by saying, “Oh I had no idea who you were. If I knew who you were I would have talked to you” — as if that excused his behavior. While this might sound like a one-off example, the research Taylor has done solidifies the work that still has to be done. Being Black should not diminish your fight for the environment and the women who’ve been active in this conversation are breaking the glass ceiling.

Dr. Beverly Wright and Vernice Miller-Travis have laid the groundwork for younger activists like 27-year-old Brianna Amingwa, who believes that if more Black children have opportunities to play in nature like she did,she can dispel their fears of the outdoors. There’s also Leah Thomas, who uses her social media to fight against the white-washed narrative of environmental justice. And climate awareness isn’t solely centered around melting ice caps and changing climates — it’s visible on a local level. 

In 2014, news of lead in drinking water in a predominantly Black and poor community in Flint, Michigan captured our attention, with political leaders only now facing legal ramifications. Food deserts sound mythical, until you drive through neighborhoods in Manhattan and notice that liquor stores, check cashing, and fast food restaurants are nowhere to be found in white neighborhoods; the higher the avenues climb, the clearer the cracks in economic and health care equity. It’s clear that food security and health care disparities are real. When Black and minority communities continuously lack access to healthy food options, clean air and drinking water. 

“Though the land has been the site of our oppression and is soaked in the blood of our ancestors, African and Indigenous, we need to reconnect with that history and let it fuel a renewable future that lives in harmony with this planet by any means,” climate activist Jaylin Ward explains to R29Unbothered. Ward — along with Arielle King and Heizal Nagginda — understands the importance of her work. For Earth Day, R29Unbothered is shining a light on three Black women who are dedicated to continuing the momentum in fighting for a cleaner and sustainable Earth.

Arielle King, 23

Who I Am:  Vermont Law Student, co-founder of Vermont Law School’s Environmental Justice Law Society

What I Do: “Through work that we’ve done at the Environmental Justice Law Society, we’ve been able to help create a network of support in education with conferences and lectures about in the area, but also across the northeast. Last school year, we opened up the Environmental Justice Clinic. So we are now providing free legal services and support to low income and BIPOC communities who are disproportionately impacted by environmental harm all across the country. Through that partnership and through that clinic, we were able to write public comments for proposed rulemaking that would create more adverse harm to environmental justice communities.”

Why This Work Matters To Me:  “I decided that I wanted to pursue a degree in environmental studies even though I was initially going into environmental science. For me, environmental studies just made sure that there was a priority of understanding people’s connection to all of these issues that were happening on the planet, the responsibility of people to protect this planet, but also the way that people are impacted by this planet. 

“Protecting people and protecting the planet are inextricably linked. Fighting for racial justice is just as necessary as fighting for a clean and healthy planet.”

Arielle King

I was really excited about looking at things in a more holistic way that included people. My minor is in political ecology, which talks about the ways that environmental protection and our connection to the planet is really based on politics and culture and where we grew up and how we grew up and what we’ve been taught in relation to the planet. 

To me, protecting people and protecting the planet are inextricably linked. Fighting for racial justice is just as important and just as necessary as fighting for a clean and healthy planet because those things are also linked.” 

When I Knew This Was My Calling: “I’ve always been really passionate about the environment. I remember going to my first rally on stopping global warming when I was eight or nine. I learned about Earth Day pretty young, and I talked to my principal of elementary school about making sure that we celebrate Earth Day by doing planting projects and cleanups, which the school actually still does now — something I’m very proud of. 

This has always been a part of my world. And I feel very fortunate because so many people I grew up with don’t have that experience. I was able to join different programs that got me into the outdoors even more like Young Women at the Helm, which was a program [for] inner city teen girls. We went to live on the Hudson River on a giant, working sailboat to learn about marine biology, conservation and water protection; that really opened my eyes. 

That same summer, I did this camp that was created by the Department of Environmental Conservation in New York. It was like it was in the Catskills mountains. I learned a lot about plants, and being outside created a love and a desire to protect this earth.” 

What I Hope To See: “Ultimately, I hope the work that I do will protect all people with a particular focus on those who have been most harmed by environmental injustice. I recognize and I am a firm believer that if you prioritize frontline communities and communities who are most vulnerable to environmental hazards, environmental harm in policies, procedures and practices, then everyone else will benefit as a result. Those who have the means to be protected have the political wherewithal. They have the political clout. They have the voice in government in one way or another. If you’re prioritizing those voices and protecting those groups, then many will get left behind. And so if we start prioritizing frontline communities, defined as communities who are going to experience and are experiencing environmental harm first and worst, then everyone else is going to benefit from whatever policies, procedures and practices you’re putting in place.” 

Heizal Nagginda,  24

Who I Am: Founder of Climate Operation based in Uganda

What I Do: “I just graduated from law school last year in December, and I founded the youth organization called Climate Operation. We educate children and communities about climate change, its intersection, and then to take it a step further, we include them in climate related activities; the activities we’ve been involved in the most is planting fruit trees.”

Why This Work Matters To Me:  “Climate-based education is not in [Ugandan] curriculum, meaning that children go through school and become young adults and they really don’t know anything about climate change or anything to do with the environment. So I created Climate Operation, for one, to make children aware of climate change and the fact that it’s not just about greenhouse gas emissions, but that there’s a human impact to it. Here in Uganda, we are already  facing those impacts. So I educate them about it, give them information about it, and then further challenge them to actually go in and start creating innovations that are not only going to help them in school, but also can be taken into communities and curb the impacts that we are facing with climate change

While kids are young, why not educate them so in the future they have already created those climate solutions that the developing world needs right now?” 

Heizal Nagginda

When it comes to the tree planting activities, I thought we shouldn’t just go out and educate people about it and give them information. We should go a step further and connect them with nature. If you connect someone with nature, for example through tree planting, it really engages them. 

I will keep doing [this work] because someone needs to fight for this, because someone needs to raise awareness. Someone needs to educate their children about climate change because as everyone keeps saying, the impacts of climate change are going to heavily impact the future, though, it has started happening to us now. While these kids are young, then why not educate them now so that in the future they have already created those climate solutions that the developing world needs right now?” 

What I’ve Learned While Doing This Work: “The lesson that I’ve learned from my work is that we really shouldn’t underestimate the power of being informed. So much is being ignored and being pushed out because we are not informed. I’ve learned that being informed about something really can take someone to greater heights when it comes to changing.”

Jaylin Ward, 20

Who I Am:  Howard University student, co-founder mAK Collective, Generation Green director, Howard University community garden revitalization and farmer’s market  

What I Do: “I played a leadership role in bringing a Farmer’s Market to Howard University as well as reviving our community garden. Our garden is being prepared for the spring in solidarity with Sovereign Earth, a queer & trans, Black & Indigenous (QTBI) collective of urban farmers. This garden has been a sanctuary for Howard University students facing food insecurity, which uncoincidentally brought together a team of Black women and people in the LGBTQ+ community. Our collective also works with returning citizens in the non-profit Hustlaz 2 Harvesters to bring fresh fruit to elders living in the Garfield Terrace public housing complex. 

mAK Collective is another queer space I helped established along with my dearest friends Royal Thomas, Ryan Thomas, Ua Hayes, Natalie Courtney, and Precious Swinton. Together we’ve made a safe place for Black non-men to create art driven by Afro-Futurism. We’ve had work in DuPont Underground, organized a protest against forced sterilization and maltreatment in ICE Detention Centers, and started a frequent clothing drive and swap with Casa Ruby. 

My liberation and safety is contingent upon rebuilding community… I am doing everything in my power to show Black people that we can affect change.

Jaylin Ward

To me, all of these things are environmental liberation (EL) issues and require a liberation framework (shout out to Ayana Albertini-Fleurant for coining EL), and that’s where Generation Green comes in. We’re a band of HBCU students providing the language and coverage of Black geographies and ecologies. There, I serve as the Director of Diaspora Engagement which is tasked with creating a global network of Black youth fighting the climate crisis through intersectional issues like period poverty, gender-based violence, and several other geographies. Our network provides amplification for campaign support, media coverage, and a plethora of mutual-aid negotiations.”

Why This Work Matters To Me: “I recognize that my liberation, my safety, is contingent upon rebuilding community in a way that doesn’t rely upon scarcity, exploitation, extraction, and fossil fuels. I have no interest or intention of reincarnating on Earth, and I am doing everything in my power to show Black people that we can affect change and our own destinies.” 

When I Knew This Was My Calling: “Organizing and activism shouldn’t be anyone’s calling. I’m still working on understanding my calling outside of digesting all of this. Fighting to live is a reality of living on Earth that I struggle with everyday. This is not a cry for help. Buddha said, “life is suffering.” Finding peace is most definitely my calling. I find a piece of that through growing meals from seeds and sharing that joy with people. The most unfortunate part is, like my ancestors, I have to spend more time fighting to live than living. Every organizer, activist, or changemaker should read Pleasure Activism by Adrienne Maree Brown and connect with their spiritual community to find what their real calling is.”

What I’ve Learned While Doing This Work: “I’ve learned that liberation isn’t one size fits all. Nothing in your life should be one size fits all— that’s oppression, beloved. I want people reading this to choose themselves every day. That looks like fighting for your community, honoring your boundaries, and venerating those who’ve come before you. Liberation is contingent upon balance and harmony. That doesn’t mean an absence of issues, hurt, and fear, and Afrofuturism accounts for this. Octavia Butler told us, “embrace diversity. Unite— Or be divided, robbed, ruled, killed by those who see you as prey. Embrace diversity Or be destroyed.” That includes our intra-community steps toward decolonization. Let’s envision something that has never been done before and experience it abundantly.”

R29Unbothered’s High Impact is rewriting the rules of wellness, wealth, and weed for Black women with real and dynamic conversations that put US at the centre.

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If you can’t make it to your colorist for a root touchup, Ryan Reynolds is the man for the DIY job — but only if you’re his wife, Blake Lively.

Yesterday, the actress posted a time-lapse video of the two joining forces to tackle her grown-out roots, and the final result was serious competition for a salon treatment. This isn’t even the first time Reynolds has acted as at-home stylist for his wife: In April, Lively took to her Instagram Story with a photo of a custom DIY hair-color kit courtesy of her colorist, Rona O’Connor, with the caption, “The fact that you trust @vancityreynolds to get this right makes me concerned for your sanity.” She added a GIF of someone shaving their head, writing, “Who needs hair anyway!?”

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Reynolds and Lively both have a reputation for their witty, subtle humor on social media. Over the long weekend, for example, Reynolds posted a video of Lively sledding in a snow-covered forest alongside a photo of the two in red-carpet glam with the caption, “My forever valentine for the foreseeable future.” Lively’s caption didn’t disappoint this time around, either: Under their most recent couple moment, she wrote, “That time I f*d my hairdresser.”

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Cardi B took to Instagram yesterday with a concise message to her haters: “I feel good.” After noting that people have made negative comments about her makeup-free face, the Grammy Award-winning rapper recorded a video fresh off the wake up, showing off her hyperpigmentation, uncombed hair, and all.

The Invasion of Privacy rapper historically hasn’t been afraid to show fans what she looks like when the makeup comes off: She posted a fresh-faced video to her Instagram in November thanking her fans for selling out her Reebok sneaker collaboration, and she danced with her bonnet on back in November after learning her song “WAP” made it to #1 on the Billboard charts. This time, however, Cardi B took a minute to address those who’ve taken candid videos and photos of her without makeup.

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“Y’all take pictures of videos of me with no makeup while I’m in motion and be like, ‘Oh look at Cardi. She looks so weird without no makeup.’ This me without no makeup. No filter. You could see all the little blemishes all over my face. You can see my lips all chapped. I just woke up 20 minutes ago, didn’t even brush my hair,” she said. “I feel good. Every single time a bitch is feeling good, like y’all be doing to the other young lady, when y’all see them doing so good, y’all be trying to pull their confidence down. That don’t work on me anymore.”

Cardi’s mention of the “other young lady” is most likely a reference to the backlash Chloe Bailey received on social media for her Instagram content. She drives home the point that women continue to be torn down for their looks not only by men, but by other women, and access to social media has made it so easy for followers — and haters — to make claims that suddenly gain real traction after a couple hundred retweets and likes.

Even after all the high-fashion red-carpet appearances and awards, Cardi B still gives her fans the energy and personality they saw when they first met her on Love and Hip Hop, and this recent video is a reflection of her “take it or leave it” personality. “I just want y’all to know I feel comfortable in my skin, that I’m great, that I’m happy,” she added — before expressing her happiness at the success of her music and ending with a quintessential New York salutation.

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TikTok has given us viral dance challenges, Amazon product phenomenons, and niche fashion trends, but the app's virtues aren't limited to the Gen Z crowd. Dermatologists have gotten wind of TikTok's ever-growing popularity — and now, instead of limiting their reactions and opinions to their office appointments, they're sharing their takes with us from their front-facing iPhone cameras.

Watching dermatologists take over TikTok is exciting for more than just the entertainment value: Not everyone can afford regular maintenance appointments, and while you should always seek expert advice for serious skin concerns, getting a virtual education can democratize access to professionals and give everyone a chance to up their skin-care knowledge. To help you navigate the endless stream of videos and accounts online, we've rounded up the five top dermatologists you should take a look at on TikTok.

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Your hands are dry and ashy from using hand sanitizer every five minutes, you’ve been switching off between staring at your phone and computer, and you're actively avoiding doing the mental math to figure out how high your screen time is. Maybe your skin threw some curveballs at you last year, and you ended up stocking up excessively during Black Friday and Cyber Monday... only to realize you don’t need half the products you anxiously tracked on the postal website.

You don’t have to admit any of this to us — we’re already here to give you the guide we think might help you stay ahead of the skin-care phenomena we predict will gain more traction over the next eleven months. Ahead, the top trends and products to keep an eye on in 2021, and the best dermatologist tips for getting in on them.

At Refinery29, we’re here to help you navigate this overwhelming world of stuff. All of our market picks are independently selected and curated by the editorial team. If you buy something we link to on our site, Refinery29 may earn commission.

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Every week on Dr. Pimple Popper, dermatologist Sandra Lee, MD, meets with men and women suffering from rare, often confidence-crushing skin conditions. The boils they carry are massive. The cysts are bubbling up to balloon-sized. But it’s the people underneath the incredible lumps and growths that make the show worth watching. Just cover your eyes through the pus-filled eruptions, if you must.

As we mourn yet another weekend that went by far too quickly, we can find the smallest silver lining in the fact that a new episode of TLC’s beloved Dr. Pimple Popper aired last night. While your stomach might not be able to handle the exploding cysts we’ve come to expect, we’ve got you covered with a recap of the episode that introduces us to three new patients: Dennis, who’s had multiple bumps on his scalp since the ’90s; Juan, who has a genetic disorder that left him with growths around his nose; and Natalie, who Dr. Lee suspects might be dealing with something else entirely. Ahead, your handy recap of the third episode of this season.

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Case #1: Dennis

Dennis, a 67-year-old motorcycle enthusiast, has to put his love of riding on hold because the cyst on the back of his head is too large to get the helmet down. After 20-plus years, the cyst is so large it’s made laying down to sleep painful — and his wife, Donna, is scared that she might lose him if he doesn’t get the growth checked out. “We’ve been together 32 years; I couldn’t imagine life without you. He’s been with me over half my life, he is my life,” she says through tears.

Dennis’ fear of doctors has kept him from seeing one regularly, but he makes the decision to trust Dr. Lee with removing his cysts. When she sees him in person, Dr. Lee’s eye widen as she admits this is the largest nodule she’s ever seen, and she nicknames it a “water balloon cyst” because of the liquid inflating it. Because the growth is located on his scalp, Dr. Lee has to be meticulous when cutting, so after sopping up blood and tying off some blood vessels, she stitches Dennis up and plans to see him in two days to remove the other three lumps.

The before-and-after images of his head will leave you speechless. Now Dennis can hit the road with Donna on their motorcycle and stay safe with his helmet in place.

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Case #2: Juan

When Juan was just 10, he started noticing freckles on his face that turned into tumors as he got older. He’s had tuberous sclerosis, a genetic condition that causes benign tumors to grow on the body, since he was a child, but the bumps around his nose and the cyst on the side of his head keep him from hanging out with friends or spending much time outside. “It’s really hard for me to live with all this. I just want to have a normal life like everybody else,” he says, clearly emotional about the distress his condition has caused him. Both his dad and sister have their fingers crossed that this trip to Dr. Lee can change Juan’s life for the better, and save him from staying in to play video games. While he’s gone to dermatologists in the past, the topical prescriptions they gave him didn’t prove effective, so he’s hoping Dr. Lee can help him.

After Juan’s consultation, Dr. Lee deduces that he has angiofibromas, a cluster of benign tumors, on his nose, and uses an electrocautery tool to cut them off. She also manages to drain and cut out the cyst on the side of his head. “Having this clear now, it is going to give me confidence to pursue my dreams. Nothing is holding me back now. It’s my time to shine,” Juan says after surgery.

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Case #3: Natalie

Natalie’s case is a standout one because Dr. Lee doesn’t actually end up having anything to cut, suture, or pop. Natalie is a 28-year-old Atlanta, Georgia, resident with raised, hyper-pigmented bumps on her arms, legs, and torso. She’s tried bleaching creams and cutting gluten from her diet, and still the itching and bumps persisted. After doing her own research, Natalie diagnosed herself with prurigo nodularis, a skin disease that causes hard, raised bumps to occur on the skin. But when Dr. Lee examines her body at the consultation, she comes to the conclusion that Natalie might be dealing with a psychological compulsion to scratch, which led to the raised bumps.

Even though the idea of potentially having an obsessive disorder scares Natalie, she’s willing to try the medicated bandages and steroid patches Dr. Lee sends her home with. After four weeks, the two check in with each other virtually and Dr. Lee notes the improvement. Hopefully, if Natalie continues with the methods Dr. Lee suggested, her skin will heal even more and allow her to finally feel comfortable in her own skin.

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DMTBeautySpot

via https://www.DMTBeautySpot.com

Sydney Clarke, Khareem Sudlow

#DMTBeautySpot #beauty

This goes out to all the Black women who somehow managed to not completely neglect their hair during the mismatched highs and lows that made last year so unbelievable. My hair has gone through three cycles of protective styles, an extended dry-scalp mini-series, and even now I’m going back and forth on whether to dye my hair, loc it, or invest in a wig. (Just reading that back I can feel the anxiety — yikes.)

Until I settle on a hairstyle, I decided to pull my bonnet from the crevice it fell into near my bed and sleep under its silky protection — a routine so many Black women are familiar with. Growing up, my mom wrapped my head in a silk head tie or scarf to protect my hair from drying out on cotton pillowcases. Like recipes and stories from childhood, I have head ties that are older than I am that go missing in the house and reappear when I least expect to find them.

Hair protection under the cover of silk scarves and bonnets is commonplace in the Black community because we’ve grown up learning the importance of caring for our hair. But now that routines have changed from running to the office or school to finding space to work on my dining room table, the idea of doing my hair every time I have a Zoom call seems… futile. 

Last week, ahead of a last-minute meeting, panic ensued as I hustled to figure out how to do my hair and look presentable on camera for seven minutes max. The debate around “presentability” as it pertains to Black hair is a frustrating and tiresome tug of war, with Eurocentric ideals on one end and expectations we’ve grown up with on the other. The concept that Black hair is wild and needs to be tamed is real, as evidenced by the fact that anti-hair discrimination had to be legislated, and still isn’t outlawed in all 50 states.

Messages like this add pressure to Black girls who become Black women with unsettled and uncomfortable relationships with their hair even before the complexities of the professional world set in. We walk through spaces hearing that we have to work twice as hard to get half as much as our white colleagues, and that work includes styling our hair. Not everyone can just do wash-and-go’s before an event — for some of us, wash day is an all-day routine that includes stretching, blow drying, parting, and twisting with a mixture of oils and creams dripping down our hands. 

Working from home should offer us the same sigh of relief as when we take off our bra or heels at the end of the day, but the fact that I still hustle to do my hair for my virtual meetings says the opposite. The typical standards of professionalism in the workplace have transformed our homes, and who better to discuss these complexities than Black women living out this reality? I decided to put together a Zoom Bonnet Meeting (ZBM) and invited six Black women working at Refinery29 and Vice to talk about how they’ve been getting along with their hair — while wearing their bonnets or head wraps, of course. When I asked why we still feel the need to go the extra mile to look good, the panel broke it down from their perspective. 

“When you’re in a group of women who look like you, it feels more like family, like a safe space; there’s an understanding there. I don’t have to explain myself,” Stephanie Long, Senior Editor of R29Unbothered, started us off in the ZBM. Her dark purple bonnet and matching lipstick were her effort to dress up that morning for the meetings she had later in the day — much more of an effort than I’d made. As a member of R29Unbothered, she works with Black women who understand the hassle and flat-out laziness everyone feels when doing their hair. Wearing bonnets to their meetings is not a call for an intervention, but once she steps out of those meetings, there’s a different dynamic. “When you’re in a group of people that’s outside of that understanding, that’s outside of your community, you definitely think about how you’re coming off to other people,” Long said.

Reana Johnson, a 2030 Fellow at Vice, went for the Big Chop in February and has been growing her hair back since then, using head wraps to add color and style to her outfits. “I’m trying to get out of this complicated relationship I have with my hair. Even looking at my Instagram, I’m like, how many of these pictures do I have with my natural hair out?” Johnson said. “So I’ve been pushing myself to get more comfortable with it, but on a day-to-day basis, it’s hard to maintain and look ‘presentable’ for calls. Sometimes my curls aren’t poppin’ and it’s just very matted up there, so what am I supposed to do?”

Jessica Noah Morgan, a staff writer at Refinery29 UK, also did a Big Chop in March. “It was really liberating, but at the same time I was learning how to actually take care of my hair,” she said. Between product changes and the weather bringing drier air, our hair becomes more of an enigma than something we’ve known our whole life. When you grow out heat damage or go through the Big Chop to cut off the results of over-processing, you have to start getting to know your hair from scratch. 

That introduction doesn’t always go smoothly. Trending entertainment writer Ineye Komonibo went through her own transition when quarantine changed her routine. “I was bald before the pandemic started, and that was my whole personality. Obviously the barber shop closed, so I had to start growing my hair out by force and it was awful,” she said. “It was an internal thing: My whole style and aesthetic was based off of me being bald and having that sleek haircut.” Komonibo also reflected on how her support system at work has helped her feel confident. “The solidarity has been really good for me to know that even if my camera is off, y’all know why my camera’s off,” she said. “I have acne cream on my face, I haven’t done anything yet.”

The camaraderie between Black women at Refinery29 that Komonibo mentions is crucial to everyone, including myself. As a fairly new member to the team, I’ve had to navigate rooms that have a mix of ages, sexualities, and racial backgrounds, but the feeling of relief when I’m in the presence of Black women is exceptional. We have our lingo; we can speak candidly about the social disconnect between us and our white coworkers. There’s no need for further explanation when it comes to our appearance, and if it comes up at all, the response is usually something along the lines of, “Girl, don’t even worry about it.”

As the conversation continued, I remembered that there’s another side to getting ready in the morning that affects our self-image. At the beginning of the pandemic, Long’s friend started a hashtag #getdressedanyway as a call to getting ready at home as an act of self-care. “Sometimes you just gotta get cute for yourself,” Long says. “I think we put a lot of energy into getting cute for other people, but sometimes it’s just as important to get cute for yourself.” Long is going through the early stages of her loc journey, which means her twists are at an in-between length. She realized she could either be embarrassed and self-conscious about it or embrace it, and she chose the latter.

“I feel like this whole pandemic has just helped me be like, ‘This is my hair, this is how it looks. If you want to say something, screw you,” Morgan said, giving voice to a feeling of take-it-or-leave it. KP Garrison, another 2030 Fellow, noted how put off she was by her professor forbidding students from leaving their cameras off during class and discouraging towels, scarves, or bonnets. “We’re balancing having our work life within our personal life now,” she said. “Not only is it already pretty invasive having everyone in your bedroom and in your living room, I felt that taking away something that makes you feel like you can get out of bed for the time being was super disrespectful.”

There are flaws in the way we view “appropriate” appearance, and that shows on a spectrum. When non-Black women get cornrows or Bantu knots and wear them to award shows, many in the Black community voice their outrage online. But even within our community, there are expectations that vary from household to household: To some, wearing a bonnet outside the house is ghetto, but for those who have locs and wear them in a bonnet, it’s culturally acceptable. As a friend said the other day to me, “It’s complicated being Black.”

On top of that, Morgan said, “We’re not even working from home. We’re trying to work through a pandemic.” As accustomed to these workplace changes as we may think we are, we’re working against fatigue, distractions, and stress compounded by fear of the unknown. When trying to figure out how we, as Black women, should present ourselves on camera in meetings that should have been emails, Long hit the nail on the head: “My normal, as a Black woman, is walking around all the time with my bonnet on. Who are you to tell me that my bonnet is not ‘class-appropriate’ or not ‘work-appropriate’? As far as I’m concerned, I look fabulous.” Komonibo added, “You can over-perform or respect yourself and be like, ‘I don’t have the capacity to do that. I don’t have the capacity to take off my bonnet today, I don’t have the capacity to draw on my eyebrows today. I’m here, and I’m going to be doing my job and doing what I came to do.” 

After this conversation, I think our working thesis on how we deal with our hair while working from home goes something like this: It’s complicated. No one wants to feel uncomfortable — especially not when you might have some semblance of comfort working where you are — but there’s a thin line between doing your hair for your own self-care and confidence, and feeling obligated to do it just to save yourself from the possible behind-the-scenes conversations about how you presented on camera. (Ryan Jordan, media strategist at Refinery29, noted that she’s even seen ads for wigs attached to baseball caps, so you can be “camera-ready” in an instant.)

The freedom we think we have now that we don’t go to an office or school building is false to some extent. We are still heavily influenced by what others think of us, and we try to present our best selves in Slack messages, phone calls, and video conferences. But when we clock out after working nine hours, do we feel accomplished in the versions of ourselves we decided to reveal that day? Did we do something out of fear, once again plunging our personal feelings into the chasm we rarely shed light on, like that bonnet I dug out from between my bed and wall?

As much as we like to think the way we look doesn’t affect the way people treat us, it’s not true. There are countless people on social media who have thousands of followers simply for looking aesthetically pleasing to the masses; everyone wants to look good. But if the determining aspect of my success and competence is based on the explanation of why I kept my bonnet on vs. doing my hair in a rush, then there’s a bigger problem at hand. For some, wearing your bonnet or durag in a meeting might feel wrong — but start exploring why, and we might get closer to uncovering the biases and assumptions that hold us tighter than we’d like to admit.

Like what you see? How about some more R29 goodness, right here?

DMTBeautySpot

via https://www.DMTBeautySpot.com

Sydney Clarke, Khareem Sudlow

#DMTBeautySpot #beauty

Welcome to Unfiltered, where we give our honest, no-B.S. reviews of the most buzzed-about beauty products, brands, and services on the market right now.

I really blame middle school for my obsession with my skin. After learning through several personal experiences that washing my face with Neutrogena oil-free cleanser and swiping on astringent without following up with moisturizer was — shocker! — not the best formula for my skin, I've become a more discerning consumer when it come to my dry, acne-prone complexion.

Typically, I manage my breakouts with benzoyl peroxide and a Tretinoin prescription from my derm, but I'm still always looking for that holy grail skin-care brand to supplement my routine. Lately, my eye's been on Youth To The People with its sustainable glass packaging and natural-leaning ingredients that are supposed to deliver the youthful side of the company name. So, I decided to try everything the brand has to offer and post my honest opinion, ahead.

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DMTBeautySpot

via https://www.DMTBeautySpot.com

Sydney Clarke, Khareem Sudlow

#DMTBeautySpot #beauty

Gearing up for the holidays means surfing the internet for the recipe you thought you saved on Instagram, FaceTiming your cousins to argue about who has the better-looking tree, and getting very last-minute gifts. On top of all that, you have to figure out what to wear and how you'll do your makeup for all the virtual dinner parties booked in on your iCal.

Holiday makeup typically calls to mind red lipstick or a smoky eye, but we're feeling eyeliner this season. Use some bold colors, draw your cat eye a little longer or higher than usual — we could all use some joy this year, and a flick of bright liner might be the break from reality you need. Ahead, 13 eyeliner looks that will be the talk of the Zoom chat in the best way.

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DMTBeautySpot

via https://www.DMTBeautySpot.com

Sydney Clarke, Khareem Sudlow