When Fleek is so not on Fleek: How to Overcome Cultural Theft

This post was inspired by a few episodes of the podcast, Strong Opinions Loosely Held.

How much do we think about the memes, gifs, and slang we use?

Probably not very much. We cackle about memes aptly sent, we slap on gifs of ridiculous reactions and responses to communicate even the most minute of emotions, and we toss slang around like nothing.

But what if there was a deeper cost to the digital images and popular sayings we use? What if even the most well meaning social media user was actually guilty of crimes of Black Face and Cultural Appropriation?

I know, I know. You're tossing your arms in the air. "Whitney, it's just a gif. It's just slang. It doesn't really mean anything, right?"

Actually, no. Not right.

Let's take for example the word fleek.

I have to be honest, I personally am not a fan of the word fleek. However, I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge its simple yet effective staying power. For a few years, everything was "on fleek", "fleeky" and so on. It was scribed on t shirts and hats, sung about or rapped in popular songs, even national restaurant chains tossed the word around.

And yet, many of these large corporations or popular artists, or even many of us regular folk ever gave credit to the originator of the word, teenager Kayla Newman better known as Peaches Monroe. Peaches on a viral Vine video is seen as the first user of the word "fleek".

Following this, the word fleek travels around the world. It ends up in songs and commercials, on clothes and tossed about by celebrities. Meanwhile Kayla received nothing for fleek. Nothing.

Only after hearing these opinions did I realize the tragedy of it all.

Grumpy Cat has a book deal, Chewbacka Mom received scholarship for her kids, the Damn Daniel kid made an appearance on Ellen and a lifetime supply of sneakers, and the "cash me outside" girl is making up to $30K for meet and greets but the young Black woman, Peaches Monroe, who created a word, y'all, was virtually begging on her now deactivated page on GoFundMe for coin to create her own beauty line?

There is something VERY WRONG with this.

Fleek made it to the dictionary, yall! And it's creator never really received the credit due to her.

Kayla's story is unfortunately not uncommon.

In fact, it is very common for popular culture the look at an element of Black culture and deem it just part of the cultural zeitgeist, to take it and use it as it's own on exchange for the opportunity to look cool. Also known as stealing, culture vulturing, or, one of the popular terms around this little blog, cultural appropriation.

Black culture, not seen as it's own unique culture, is regularly pilfered from, often to be commodified. It is seen as something not belonging to that cultural group, but something that belongs to the entirety of popular society. Black culture is seen as not belonging to the Black culture. This disempowers Black people, especially Black creatives, who very often do not receive the credit (or the coin) due to them by popular society.

So where is Peaches now? Cannot say. As I have said, her GoFundMe has since been deactivated and she has seeming disappeared from the scene. But her story is critical to those of us who are creators, to guard our intellectual property, to make sure we are properly credited in everything we share, and to have a plan for potential virality.

We also must continue to tell stories like Kayla's. We must make sure that we hold ourselves accountable, and others as well. We must let people know about the potential deterrents to sharing in today's highly connected, voracious internet culture, whether its memes or adding to the lexicon.

Now that is so on fleek.