Beauty ideals in America frustrate me so. If I hear one more white woman talk about how gross Beyonce's butt is, I will scream. Seriously. If I hear someone ask why I wear my hair "that way" aka natural, I will punch them. I have accepted my fate as unattractive in America. I have learned to live with the fact I am not airbrushed, not blond, my hair will never be naturally straight, I am not petite, I have an ass and thighs, and my eyes are boring old brown.
One of the reasons I quit using relaxer was, I couldn't keep my hair straight. I was sick of not going swimming because I was nervous about my hair getting messed up and the time it would take to straighten that hair again with an evil hot iron. Worrying about the rain when coming to and from my car. Humidity making my hair frizz up. So I basically just said f*ck it, and let it grow out of my head as it came out. No painful sores on my head and the dreaded 6 to 8 week ritual of being in the beauty salon for the whole Saturday was no more.
I have decided if I can forgo relaxer, I can forgo ever looking like a Victoria Secret model. That my jeans will always fit perfect throughout the thighs, but hang loose at my waist. I will always buy a shirt a size bigger so my boobs don't appear to overflow from the shirt, but yet the shirt will fit weird and loose everywhere else.
I as a black woman can't compete with the petite frame and straight long hair of Asian women. I can't compete with the blond hair and blue eyed Europeans, and I can't compete with the long flowing hair and light skin of the Hispanic woman that is stereotypically flaunted by the media. These women who are the ideals, the ones everyone desires and everyone wants. I am black, the one group that never has the men of all races chasing after her. I am in the one group that men don't go for if you were to look at movies, television, the media in general, etc. Asian and Hispanic women are exotic. Black women are just too far off the spectrum to be considered anything more than an oddity.
15 comments:
Hey Siddity,
I do understand your position though I personally can not relate to it since I was socialized in a culture that viewed beauty and its purpose differently. I find here that beauty has been sexualized. beauty=sexual desireablity. And by that method the BW that is not recognised gets to suffer on the dating scene. I think we should find adoptive methods that are different from the rest. They can use their accepted beauty standards, we could use something else e.g our brains and strength. And believe me these can have a bigger effect than physical attractiveness alone. The Black race still has long ways to go, surely being seen as beatiful should be the least of our concerns.
BTW I tagged you.
Check out my blog:
http://black-african-woman.blogspot.com/
LOVE THIS POST!!
My 2 cents... The worst thing is that so many of us have accepted our "low" status.
God forbid another Black woman catches me drinking a slimfast! They'll tell me I'm trying to be like a white girl.
Since when is dieting (for maintenance) a white thing?
When I had a short natural hairstyle, Black men barely gave me the time of day. It was white men and latino men who BROKE THEIR NECKS trying to holla.
We need to put the magazines down and get off the celebrity websites because guess what? The media will never promote us as being desirable objects of beauty.
So what? It doesn't mean that we can't find someone to love us. All it takes is one.
Instead we need to focus on inner healing and growth so that we can acquire the qualities we need to make GOOD CHOICES, ie, happy marriages and homes for our children.
Do your own tailoring, I do. My shoulders are very broad. So I either get stuck with things that are too baggy or too constricting. Intead of having everything tailored professionaly I just learned to sew. Saves money and very therapeutic. You dont even have to miss House M.D. (fill in whatever sitcom you watch)
Post Script: Nothings wrong with Beyonce's butt.
dmb
Slim fasts are great!!! I drink them 4 at a time.
Siditty,
Another on point post. Grata, I agree that as black people, we have plenty to worry about, but it's pretty hard to ignore all the messages you have been given since birth about looks. Especially when you are still in the meat market. I read an article last year that stated, One study last year
reported that 67% of women ages 15 - 64 "withdrew from life-engaging activities due to feeling badly about their looks." Among these "activities" listed are going to school, visiting the doctor and speaking one's mind. We all know that the inhibiting power of
feeling ugly and fat, but a number like this makes it clear that this situation is a downright emergency. I've also seen reports showing that being overweight can harm our career. It would be nice to pretend looks don't matter, but it's just not the case.
Great post!
I remember being in high school trying to fit into Guess jeans. It WASN"T working. I then got myself an ulcer trying to diet my way into a Fashion Industry beauty ideal.
I am happy to say that my middle school students have a much more confident body image than I did at their age and they don't feel the need to compete! So even if there doesn't seem to be hope of changing the tastes and perceptions of American beauty, we can at least continue to work on our desires to fit unrealistic/narrow-minded standards.
So true. SO TRUE! We are not the ideal of beauty unless we're wearing weaves and doing all sorts of other stuff to alter our skin tone or appearance.
I want to see all these stars with their natural hair. Tyra, Beyonce...all of them!
Well weaves are benign compared to some of the other measures. There is a beauty supply store near me that is owned by Africans. I am not sure which country they are from, but they have QUITE the inventory of skin bleaching creams. I also noticed they had a wide array of clobetasol, which is prescription only and indicated for rashes and other skin conditions (not supposed to be used for more than 2 weeks). I don't have any idea how they were carrying it since I doubt they are a beauty supply/licensed pharmacy. I can't believe people are literally risking their health like this.
Don't worry about it. Black women are as beautiful as women of any other color, I don't care what anyone says. Nothing wrong with some curves, it's the designers' opinion on feminine shape that's wrong, not the shape filling the clothing.
Most high end clothing designers are so out of touch with what the average woman's size is, all their clothes need custom tailoring anyway, regardless of race.
Grata:
Here sex sells, heck we even got little kids trying to look sexy, it is definitely sex=beauty
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dmb:
Instead we need to focus on inner healing and growth so that we can acquire the qualities we need to make GOOD CHOICES, ie, happy marriages and homes for our children
I agree 100%. Our focus should be to improve ourselves and try our damnedest not to let beauty standards run our lives.
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mr:
I can't sew worth a lick. I am horrible at it.
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Yan:
Unfortunately in our society looks do matter and since we have such a warped view of beauty, it has gone the way of plastic surgery and airbrushed people being the ideal. Unaltered people don't stand a chance!!!
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Janie:
I couldn't wear guess jeans either. I hated that, but damnit I tried to wear them, the waist just hanging all over the place.
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Jeff
I just want a pair of jeans that fit me in the thighs and waist. So I am not always pulling up my pants LOL
I hate society. I just wish I could wipe out all the idiots that fill our minds with "the black race is inferior in every way" notion...
I think black women are beautiful. Both in and out. If people feel otherwise, they should jump off a cliff and go die.
I hate society. I just wish I could wipe out all the idiots that fill our minds with "the black race is inferior in every way" notion...
I think black women are beautiful. Both in and out. If people feel otherwise, they should jump off a cliff and go die.
Soila,
I think things are changing now. We have people being more vocal about their preferences not just being about the blond haired, blue eyed woman. I think also we have to learn how to love ourselves. It is really hard sometimes though, but I think all and all improvements are being made, it is just really, really slow, and needs to be accelerated.
There are so many examples of gorgeous and desired black women in the media these days. Why not compare your beauty with Iman, Naomi Campbell, Nia Long, Loretta Devine, Jill Scott, Corinne Bailey Rae, India Arie, Jessica White (Victoria’s Secret model), Alek Wek... the list goes on. No you don’t look like an Asian chick, so what? You have centuries of attainable black beauty to aspire to.
Usually, when a black woman abandons the relaxers and pressing combs it's an act of self-realization and liberation but it seems your decision was simply capitulation. I know that we have battered self-esteem due to the media but you must work on yourself to combat that. This same mind-f@ck keeps our youth killing each other in the hood and convinces us that it is not our place to try to achieve. I recommend reading The Mis-Education of the Negro by Carter G. Woodson.
You seem to have been convinced that you are irredeemably ugly but that notion is non-sensical since if Africans were the first humans, why would Mother Nature (or God) create the female of the species in a form that is not appealing to the male? If black women are ugly and undesirable then the human race would have died off millennia ago. The perpetuation of the unf@ckable black female is a fallacy created by our white oppressors in order to cover up their own acts of sexual exploitation of black women (and children and men) from the plantation through the reconstruction and even into the 20th century civil rights era. In order to erase their ugly past as systematic rapists, pedophiles and run of the mill sexual sadists, they created the idea that we were not desirable and placed their own women on a pedestal. By painting us as animalistic, masculine, unsexy they had an easy defense – black women are UNRAPE-ABLE. They then projected their deviant tendencies onto the black male, creating the myth that black men were sexual aggressors to be feared by white women.
I see all types of couples and usually when I see a white man with a black woman, that woman is brown or dark brown. She often wears her hair natural. I am a dark woman and get approached by white guys – a lot - and Asians and our own Black men. We really are attractive to all types of men. But the media tends to ignore that. Oh well. Just as you wouldn’t want white people to believe everything they hear and see about us in the media (because it is biased) you should be careful not to let that same white-run media influence your beliefs about yourself. The facts of the world simply do not support the white-media’s lies.
Lastly, why waste your money on overpriced denim if they don’t cut the clothes to fit you? It’s not your responsibility to make clothes look good, it’s the clothing manufacturers job to make YOU look good. If they fail, then don’t buy from them.
Peace.
"Usually, when a black woman abandons the relaxers and pressing combs it's an act of self-realization and liberation but it seems your decision was simply capitulation."
No my reasoning as stated before wasn't necessarily surrender, but realizing that there was nothing wrong with the hair growing out of my head. That a relaxer doesn't equate to neat and professional. I have stated that many times. In terms of India Arie, Jill Scott, Loretta Divine, where have you seen these women held up as example of beauty in mainstream media? That was the whole reason for this post.
You seem to have been convinced that you are irredeemably ugly but that notion is non-sensical since if Africans were the first humans, why would Mother Nature (or God) create the female of the species in a form that is not appealing to the male? If black women are ugly and undesirable then the human race would have died off millennia ago.
I know I am not ugly. I get approached by men of all races, am I saying I am a beauty queen? No. I am saying that even though I don't fit into the confines of traditional beauty, I am still considered attractive to at least some people. Most people don't fit into the ideal beauty standards and most people end up finding people who are attracted to them. I never once said in that post I felt I was ugly. I simply noted I am tired of mainstream media dictating what is attractive in our society. There is a reason plastic surgery is so popular now, and I think mainstream media is the blame.
I see all types of couples and usually when I see a white man with a black woman, that woman is brown or dark brown. She often wears her hair natural. I am a dark woman and get approached by white guys – a lot - and Asians and our own Black men. We really are attractive to all types of men.
I am the black woman you see with natural hair and a white husband. Apparently he thought I was attractive. In matter of fact he was the one eight years ago who asked me why I kept straightening my hair if it hurt so badly. He was the person that bought me to the realization my hair is fine the way it is.
Lastly, why waste your money on overpriced denim if they don’t cut the clothes to fit you? It’s not your responsibility to make clothes look good, it’s the clothing manufacturers job to make YOU look good. If they fail, then don’t buy from them.
you are talking to a woman who shops pretty much exclusively at old navy for all her denim needs. I don't know what kind of jeans fit my frame anyway. Like I said I always have the loose waist with the perfect fit in the thighs.
Too many times I've had this discussion with my girls.
Too many times we've cursed out Tyra for being Tyra, and Beyonce for BEYing BEYond a "regular black girl."
Question of the century: What is upward mobility/monetary success worth??? Is financial success worth allowing a black to denigrate black womanhood and blackness in general? Is financial gain so important to us as a people that our public image can be bought and sold by white executives/young white suburban males???
I think I'll write a blog about it.
I do have a blog, but if I get more serious about it, I'll start a new one here.
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