Ebonee Davis is a supermodel, activist, speaker and proudly black and natural too! When she first started her career she was told she couldn’t get jobs because she was black so she conformed to the ‘standards of the indsutry.
In her own words I was told that the only black models in the industry who work either looked like they’d been plucked out of a remote village in Africa, or looked like a white model dipped in chocolate and since I wanted to work, I assimilated. I think the word kind of implied that I had some sort of “choice” in the matter— to cave in or to stand my ground. When in reality, I didn’t. There was no alternative at the time. Either straighten my hair or don’t work. That was the reality I faced.
Months after she was told by her agents that she will never get to work with her natural hair, she got an opportunity to model for Calvin Klein.
Apart from modelling Ebonee is an activist who emphasizes the duty fashion media has to help change the perception of black people. Ebonee thinks it is the same lack of value for black lives and refusal to see us as equal that excludes us from fashion and causes black women and men to be gunned down in the street.
