Vanessa Willoughby

Vanessa Willoughby is an editor and freelance writer. Her work has appeared on The Toast, The Hairpin, Bitch, and the Ms. Magazine blog. She is also Prose Editor for Winter Tangerine.

vanessa.willoughby@gmail.com

20 Years Later, Bring It On Still Teaches Us About Cultural Appropriation

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The Rancho Carne Toros' innocent "borrowing" is not the same as a mutual “cultural exchange.”

Kathleen Collins was one of the first Black women to direct movies in Hollywood, and we can still learn from her

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How Us uses images of Hands Across America to challenge our complicity

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How Dope rewrote coming-of-age movies for Black teens

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My complicated childhood love for Addy Walker, the first Black American Girl doll

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Like many girls my age at the time, I wanted an American Girl doll—but none of them looked like me. Finally, in 1993, we were given Addy Walker. I was grateful for a doll who looked like a little Black girl, but was marketing a doll as a runaway slave the solution to unequal representation?