One thing that is really nice about blogging is that it provides opinionated people like me in which to speak my mind. So anyway, I ran across an article here regarding Vanity Fair's March issue. The article criticizes Vanity Fair's issue for toting pictures of the new young "Hollywood." Apparently, there is not ONE brown face among them. However, this point did not alarm me because quite frankly everyone knows that very few black women have been able to move beyond "mammy" and "jezebel" roles if at all in Hollywood(we will not discuss how black music videos have only encouraged these stereotypes-that is a discussion for another day). What most alarmed me was how (apparently) these actresses are described such as beautiful, dewey, ivory soap girl features. All these words really seem to capitalize on white standards of beauty.
Now from my experience black women outwardly and inwardly have managed to maintain a strong sense of self, positive self concepts and emotional strength despite this country's- well really the world's view that white is the standard of beauty for women and black is the standard of beauty for men making black masculine. From our hair, to our figures, to our faces we have been considered unattractive. And while this is not new I just find it appalling that it still continues to stare us in the face. And while some of us are unaffected by it so many of us are affected! I cannot count the amount if times I have had a man- a black man tell me he prefers light skinned women! And I think that slowly but surely this image of beauty is wearing us down.
Despite the fact that blacks have made incredible gains has evidenced by our President, some things remain the same and we must consider the impact of the changes in modern society (increase in interracial marriage) on these viewpoints. Quite frankly it seems that despite the fact that it has become ok to be black it is still ok to bash the black women's physical appearance. Now some might say who cares looks are not important but we all know that this is NOT true. That to a degree women are judged by their looks by eachother and by men. And black women's desirability or lack thereof continues to be something we must just accept. It is time that black women stand up and not just support each other but come together for a movement to include us in these beauty standards! We know that we are strong and sophisticated but we must insist that society acknowledge us as feminine and beautiful rather than leave us out! We should not support these fashion magazines that continue to leave us out of them! We should not stand by and laugh as our sisters are described as black and ugly, nappy-headed or gorilla-like. We should celebrate our most african features as the gorgeous! We have been quiet on these issues and accepted them as "life" but it is time that we make it clear that this is unacceptable.
I know that many of us are raised to believe that we should not complain, that we are the back bone of the race and that there is no real black women's issue but rather a racial issue, but this is not true. Our own issues have been ignored and have only become larger. We have our own issues that we should support. We need to stand together! Stop fighting for the crumbs that are left over we need to make our own damn bread and then sell that shit.
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