Is Black Really Beautiful?
Thursday, January 19, 2012 at 3:32AM Do we as a collective really think Black is beautiful?
We all know the “right” response to that particular question…but there are so many other things we say that might be outing our honest feelings, our un-PC private thoughts.
Yesterday, I was reading “On Baby Blue Ivy Carter and the Alleged Ugliness of Blackness” on Colorlines. Writer Akiba Solomon also had picked up on a startling trend I noticed in comments about Jay-Z and Beyonce’s new addition: backhanded well-wishes to the couple, hoping that Baby Girl Carter looked more like her mother and less like her father. Solomon equated reading so many negative stories about Baby Blue as “walking among stunted souls who traffic in the idea that the full lips, large eyes, broad nose and dark brown skin of a Jay-Z is inherently ugly.”
Let’s admit it: A lot of us are bamboozled, led astray, and just plain brainwashed when it comes to what traits we find attractive on Black people. It’s no accident that the Black women whose beauty we fawn over — the Beyonces and Rihannas and Halle Berrys — all happen to be on the lighter end of the Black color spectrum. It’s no secret that we as a people equate lightness with beauty. Ask any woman who failed the brown paper bag test, who grew up hearing she was “pretty for a dark girl” – as if to be both is some sort of inherent contradiction, and she just happened to strike gold. But the color issue is just scratching the surface.
If some of us are very honest, we’ll acknowledge that there are only certain “Black” physical features that we as a collective find attractive. Curves? A blessing and curse. Full lips? Eh… depends on how full. Broad nose? On women, not at all. On men? Some get a pass, but not Jay-Z. Kinky hair? Not so much. There’s a reason most Black women “prefer” perms and even a lot of natural girls spend an inordinate amount of time and product trying to reconfigure their coils into curls.
Read more: here
Reader Comments (2)
Everyone is beautiful in their own ways. What matters most is what is inside...it's forever.. beauty fades..
You are sic for thinking this. Africa is full of dark skinned beauties