Lauren London's Puma Campaign Video Shows Why She's the Quintessential California Girl
In this op-ed, writer Tarisai Ngangura explores Lauren London, Los Angeles’s Black history, and how her version of the California girl isn’t a blonde-haired, blue-eyed white woman, but a Black one.
I fell in love with Los Angeles by way of the Black women I watched on television growing up. From films like Friday, Boyz n the Hood, Love and Basketball and TV shows like Girlfriends and Moesha where black women were exuberant and unforgettable with the palm-tree-lined city as their backdrop. These California girls whose quips were always biting, whose edges were always laid, and whose hustle was never-ending, were my introduction to L.A., but most mainstream American magazines and television programming failed to properly acknowledge them. When I would see references of California girls, so rarely was that image a Black girl from Fresno, Oakland, or Compton, and this perception was one that was clearly laid out way back in 1965.
When The Beach Boys released their trademark hit “California Girls,” it quickly climbed up to the number-three spot on the Billboard 100. The song was both in praise of California’s beautiful women and a melancholic ballad, because these kind of women lived in sunny California and nowhere else. Though not explicitly laid out, the implication was clear that the “all so tanned girls,” who were the epitome of laid-back glam, were white women. Since then, that image of the California girl whose hair hangs in loose beach curls dampened by sea salt and whose skin is the perfect bronze color — has never quite lost its footing; there are entire beauty regiments based around achieving that perfect California girl look.
But for me, the quintessential California girl looks like the Black women I saw on television (Joan Clayton and Moesha), in movies (Brandi and Monica Wright), and music videos, and nobody embodies that more for me than Lauren London. She spent her childhood in this city, rocking her favorite Air Jordan Cements, her Perry Ellis jacket, and breaking bread with uncles who wore nothing but Cortezes. California’s history with Blackness makes the manufactured and often recycled image of a pretty, blonde-and-blue-eyed occasional surfer hard to believe. Yes, Black girls can be carefree too.
Walk with me through the Jhené Aiko music video for “Never Call Me,” where in-between verses on unworthy lovers and unrequited affections, Aiko delivered a visual homage to L.A. highlighting the places she loves and chilling with the people who make it a sanctuary; in it, London makes a brief-but-hard-to-miss cameo. In a baseball jersey repping Crenshaw, a black snap-back and cut-off denim shorts tied together with medium-sized gold hoops, the actor is wearing the L.A. girl uniform. The staples being gold hoops, laid edges, and a relaxed attitude. It’s casual but cool, masculine and feminine, the perfect amount of nonchalant, giving off the air that a California girl can go into any space and find a way to be both confident and chill. In her “Sneaker Shopping with Complex” episode, she talked about the evolution of her style. She says that since high school, she’s always been in a “hoodie and some kind of Jordan or Adidas,” taking cues from Aaliyah, whose effortless look influenced the way London approaches fashion. “When I’m getting dressed or going somewhere, I keep in mind that the outfit belongs to me. I don’t belong to the outfit,” she says.
Earlier this week the actor released a campaign video featuring her recent collaboration with Puma for her Forever Stronger collection.
In the two-minute clip, she moves through Crenshaw Boulevard and Slauson Avenue directing us with her gaze through the day-to-day flow of the city’s residents; a young, Black girl walking down the street with a jump rope, vans strung high on the electric lines and graffiti portrait murals of her late partner, the rapper Nipsey Hussle. Palm trees always in view, London leads viewers through the California that raised her, of course in her gold hoops and wearing several pieces from her upcoming line including a standout red cropped hoodie and a matching tan sweatsuit. Juxtaposed against London’s questions of rebirth in the aftermath of profound pain, slow healing, and unquantifiable loss, are looks which carry ease and a certain swag. California is home to the OGs, people who say what they mean and mean what they say, carrying themselves lightly because, what’s there to stress about when you always speak your mind? London’s aesthetic takes from her environment with a playfulness and self-assured air of being the girl who can get along with everybody but takes sh*t from no one. From her comfortable velour tracksuits and curve-hugging summertime-fine dresses, she’s the embodiment of chill.
It’s not hard to imagine why for The Beach Boys that a California girl was someone who looked absolutely nothing like London. The band was from Hawthorne, California, which, for a variety of reasons, including anti-Black housing policies, had majority, if not all, white residents. Their viewpoints came from their position as young white men in a country where their visibility was both guaranteed and inevitable. Yet, Ismail Muhammad wrote, “You can’t disentangle Blackness from California,” as he expanded on the legacy of those who ran to the state to escape the violence in Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, and Alabama. They came to California searching for opportunities and safety, and though physical violence — specifically the Klan — was seemingly less on the West Coast, life remained riddled with institutional barriers. Cities like Compton, Oakland, and Inglewood with majority Black inhabitants were routinely surveilled and raided by the police, and after Nixon’s “War on Drugs,” in the ‘70s, thousands of men and women had come into contact with the criminal justice system with hundreds falling through the cracks, the majority of whom were Black. This legacy of fighting to survive is ever-present for Black people living in California and it’s one that exists alongside the beach aesthetics that have defined the state’s image in mainstream media. To be easy, light, effortless, and Black is a choice that acknowledges a hopeful future. One that author, Octavia Butler, also from California, believed in: “That’s all anybody can do right now. Live. Hold out. Survive,” she wrote in Parable of the Sower, which was set in a barren North California that had been destroyed by climate change, capitalism, and racism. “I don’t know whether good times are coming back again. But I know that won’t matter if we don’t survive these times.”
After the death of her life partner, London is in a state of rebuilding and it’s this shift that’s present in the PUMA video as she moves lightly and with care. The backdrop of blue skies above sandy beaches, next to a layered history of Black people battling systemic oppression is London’s backyard and it has molded her with the sounds of West Coast hip hop, the tangible effects of state-sanctioned violence, and ‘90s California Black girl film magic. This city’s visual and audio landscape has informed her character down to the way she dresses; often with a fire sneaker, rarely without hoops, always repping her hood, and with hoodies worn up or down, depending on the occasion and the mood.
London is the California girl you might not see in beauty commercials promising a carefree look, even as she exudes all the qualities which have made the Golden State a mythical haven of perennial, untampered sun-drenched American dreams. As the PUMA video comes to a close, she stands in the middle of a palm tree-lined street where once she stood with the one she loved and where she’s now on her own. London’s look is cool, not trying too hard, and proves she’s in control — a real California girl.
Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue
