Confusing! White Girl Returns From Montreal With Cornrows

With reading week coming to an end, UofT students are completing their mass migration from Montreal back to Toronto. Most students have returned from the frigid francophone city with mementos such as desperately-purchased toques or limb-saving gloves. But second-year student and local white girl, Stephanie Wiggins, decided to stick to her roots this reading week.

An avid traveller of tropical destinations, Stephanie Wiggins has long been known to return from her various trips with Club Med t-shirts, an aggressively burnt face and, of course, cornrows. And while the Montreal November weather wasn’t exactly conducive to Wiggins’ itinerary of drinking a constant stream of beachside piña coladas and offending a local or two, she didn’t let that get in the way of her hair-braiding tradition.

Classmates have voiced discomfort to Wiggins over the racial politics of her hairstyle, and more emphatically, have voiced confusion over her getting cornrows in Montreal.

“I know Montreal isn’t exactly Jamaica, but getting cornrows was just a really important part of my upbringing,” says Wiggins, citing the hairstyle’s cultural importance to white girls on vacation. Sources say that due to the intense backlash experienced in her first couple steps back on campus this morning, Wiggins is considering transferring to the much more accepting environment at Queen’s University.

Photo Credit: Nona Jalali