Most black people don�t think they are beautiful
Angie Thato Chuma | Friday April 25, 2014 16:00
How is it that a dark skinned short haired African woman is making waves in a culture known hardly to affirm black beauty that does not compromise itself? Well, I don’t know and frankly I don’t care because that is not what this is about, this is not about white people or whether they validate African women who aren’t unapologetic about their image in a hugely whitecentric industry. This, for once, is about black people and the discomfort that comes with including DARK women in the discourse of beauty.
It has become a convenient thing for us to miss the point, to measure if she is indeed the most beautiful when we know that this goes beyond if she’s prettier than a dark skinned girl you know. People never questioned if Gwen Paltrow was the prettiest white woman when she graced the cover because with them, whiteness constitutes as default validation, which confirms my assumption that this is not really about aesthetics.
When Beyoncé and Halle Berry covered the issue even though they don’t look like most African women, no one said anything. So, why is there a discomfort with someone who has the prevalent African tone gracing that issue? People are reducing it to aesthetics because it’s more convenient than an in-depth dialogue which would critically analyse what kind of standards we uphold to define African beauty, which most commonly divert to whiteness standards. I am not convinced this is about aesthetics and merely that.
For once, an unexpected voice and platform is telling them to look at their black mothers for the first time. Most black people have a hard time affirming their own black mothers as beautiful aesthetically, they do say it, but not as a genuine affirmation. It’s an affection that is expected, not an authentic one. Dark women have received decades of bad publicity in popular culture regarding their beauty as it is mostly seen as something to enhance and improve.
When someone like Lupita comes in, and does not change her look for it to fit to the expected standard there is a discomfort. It raises a conversation many don’t want on their tongues, a conversation that includes dark skin in the discourse of beauty without it having to be emphasized or pushed by other dark skinned women.
This time, it is a pop culture magazine that is pushing the conversation. As black people, I find that the discomfort to look at ourselves is so scorching that we would rather dismiss the conversation altogether as ‘she’s not the prettiest African we have’. Now that our image has moved to pop culture, somewhere we expected it not to be affirmed ‘as it is’ it is breeding a lot of discomfort.
I’m not concerned about why they are doing it, whether it’s for monetary means or to appeal to a market of dark skinned women or to convince us that they adore our beauty and so forth, I care about what we think, what we uphold and what we continue.
Young black girls may now start to alter the way they look at themselves because now they would notice they are part of the conversation instead of being negated. If anything, that is what they need to hear and see because clearly it is not emphasized enough. It’s time we see that ultimately we are the ones who reject our image to be in any conversation.
This article first appeared on Angie Chuma's blog