How I See the World as a Black Woman--Part II: Standards of Beauty

Black is beautiful. That is a phrase that was invented in the 1960s to affirm black peoples' sense of self that was robbed from them by slavery and Jim Crow segregation, and later, the media bias against black people in the United States. For many years, having dark skin and kinky hair, full facial features, and elaborate curves to one's body was considered ugly. Black people did things to themselves to change the aspects that they were taught to hate, such as enduring hours of painful hair treatments such as straightening and relaxing their hair. And in the later 20th century, plastic surgery became another tool in arsenal of self-hate. Why not have one's African features cut down to look European, or one's skin lightened? We bought into that assertion that something was wrong with the way God made us.

I had my hair relaxed when I was a young preteen, and for years, I adhered to a semi-regular regimen of hair relaxation, and other treatments to keep my hair healthy because I had fundamentally undermined its natural integrity. I took Biochemistry in college, and I learned why my hair was curly, the unbreakable sulfur bonds. I also learned what relaxer did to my hair, it broke those bonds in my hair and made it weaker and more susceptible to damage. That was around the time I said no more. I cut out my relaxed hair and went natural. I haven't gone back. That was about twenty years ago. Honestly, I don't miss it. Before someone gets mad and decides to send fifty angry retaliatory posts, I'm not saying that one cannot be proud of one's heritage and have relaxed hair. What I am asking or trying to get one to think about is why you need to relax your hair to meet someone else's standards of beauty? What is a standard of beauty? Is there one or many?

Yes, I could go on and on about beauty standards, and I don' t have to stick to the ones that impact black women specifically. What about the thin body beauty standard, which is unrealistic and especially hurtful for women? What the modeling industry does is hire pre-teens and physically immature girls to model a lot of their clothes. Most grown women don't look like that. They have breasts and hips. Their contours are naturally more lush, and that's the way it should be. So why should a woman have to starve, diet, and exercise herself to a shape that's not realistic for her? I think we all can agree that being healthy, eating right and exercising is important. What we don't all agree on is what is a normal body size. Some people are going to be larger than others. Instead of trying to be like a 12-year-old model, maybe their focus should be on being healthy for themselves.

It's interesting going to the doctor and getting the "You need to lose weight lecture" every time. I am prepared to get it. I know I need to lose weight. I don't need a body chart to tell me that. However, I know that my cardiovascular state is pretty healthy. My cholesterol levels are normal, and my blood sugar is normal. However, I was told I was pre-diabetic because of my weight and that my blood sugar is on the high end of normal. The second tells me more objectively what my status is than my weight. So, I work on that, exercising and trying to eat better (although I don't always succeed with the latter). And I honestly feel better when I take care of myself. That's why I want to lose weight. Not because the media says fat is ugly and thin is in. Personally, I don't find unhealthy thinness attractive, either in a man or a woman. Notice I said unhealthy. There is a difference between natural slenderness or athleticism and a thin body due to dieting. I call it the "Barbie Doll Syndrome", ie, the head is bigger than the body. When a person is dieting and has not maintained a healthy body fat ratio, their head starts looking two times as big as their body. Yes, some people just have big heads, but that' s different. I don't like to put a lot of stock into scientific treaties on racial differences, because a lot of that feeds into racism. What I do know is that like breeds of animals, if you have a population of certain people who breed together, there will be a concentration of genes. Some of those genes code for physical characteristics, such as shovel-shaped incisors in Asians, and a fuller aspect to the nasal base in African-Americans. Along those lines, you might see differences in body shape that would cause certain groups to wear their weight differently. Is that a get out of jail card for obesity? No. But what it does mean is that one weight chart won't work for every woman of every racial/ethnic group. And along with that, not all women would be able to hold to a standard of size zero. Have you ever looked at most of the actresses on TV? How many of them are full-bodied, and I don't mean overweight? Not too many. Most are stick-thin, with the "Barbie Doll Syndrome" going on, and no curves except for the fake ones. Watch a Victoria Secret commercial, and you will see that these adolescent girls actually have to cock their hips and stick their chests out to give the appearance of curves. Watch the Dove commercials, and you will see normal looking women. Go walk around at the mall, and you will see what normal women look like. Why should television be such a profound difference? What message is that sending girls and women? A very poor one. To hate oneself because you don't have the skinny look of most of the women on television and in movies who are lauded for their beauty.

Why is brown skin undesirable and pale skin sexy? Who said that was the case? Personally, I don't think one is better than the other, other than the bone-deep rejection of pale skin as the ideal. I like the rich variety of skin colors that nature provides us. From blue black to porcelain white. All beautiful. I don't think a person should be afraid of being called names because their skin is dark, nor should a person subject themselves to harmful UV rays just to be brown. Embrace what you are. Make the most of what you've been given, and own it. And let's be clear, the color issue is deeply entrenched within the African American culture. We take it way too far. If you watch BET music videos, do a head count. How many of the video girls are lighter-skinner with long hair? How many are darker-skinned with shorter, kinky hair? What lessons does that convey to young black girls in this country, on top of the ones that mainstream media show when you see consistently that the lists of the most beautiful women are all white, or lighter-skinned women with long, straighter hair? Not a good one. Did I ever wish I was blue-eyed with blond hair? If it did, it was for a hot minute. I don't want to be either. I like my curly/wavy hair brown skin, and brown eyes. Again, whatever floats your boat. If you want a weave, knock yourself out. But why do you need to put fake hair on your head to feel womanly and beautiful? I personally find short hair very attractive and flattering on women. Some women don't look good with long hair. And the long, straight weave that some black women sport looks unnatural. I wonder how gorgeous they would look with their natural curls or whatever length God gave them. I wonder how much happier they would be if they didn't have to spend hours upon hours at the beauty shop, and thousands of dollars on getting their hair done, even when they can't afford it.

I touched on plastic surgery. This is not race-specific. I watched 20/20 when they talked about plastic surgery, and it was disheartening. An 89-year-old woman had gotten breast implants. Really???? What about a surgeon who was operating on his own daughters since they were young teens? And the men who were getting their legs broken so that they could be taller. They have these rods implanted that they have to flex in a painful and wrong-looking procedure several times a day to stimulate the necessary bone growth so they could be taller. When does the madness end? Will the surgeon's scalpel give you the ability to love yourself that you lacked beforehand? No. That comes from within.

I'm just a pilgrim here. A person with eyes in her head and an opinion. My opinion is no more important than anyone else's, but I choose to exercise the opportunity to get this off my chest. I love womanhood, very much. I think women should have all the opportunities, the love, the acceptance, and the freedom to be happy in life and with themselves as they can grasp in life. I hope that women can break free of these fears of never measuring up to unrealistic beauty standards that hurt more than they heal.

How I See the World as a Black Woman--Part I

How I See the World as a Black Woman—Part I

In light of some of the issues that I have faced lately and seen around me, I thought I would spend some time on my blog talking about this. What does the world look like through my eyes as a black woman?

You’d be surprised (or not) that my view of the world is not overly different from the view of a white woman. One thing that I’d say first and foremost—every person is unique. Making generalizations about all people of a certain group is fruitless, inaccurate, and fallacious. Because everyone has their own story to tell, their own life to live, even if they might be the same color, ethnicity, from the same neighborhood, or even the same family. My sister and I are very close. But even we don’t see things the same way. So, that’s my caveat here.

I think the main difference I might have from a white woman’s view of the world is that I am more sensitive about race issues, and rightly so. Being a black person in America, I am not allowed to bury my head in the sand. Race comes into the picture a lot more than it should. I learned this the hard way.

When I went to High School in Dallas, TX, that was my first real personal acquaintance with racism. I was treated differently from whites because I was not white. I was assumed to be less intelligent, and of less value. It was automatically assumed that I couldn’t handle academically rigorous subjects, even though I have always been considered intelligent and done fairly well in school. I started reading when I was four, and I read at an advanced level. I would have been put in 2nd grade as a kindergartner, but I couldn’t do the math (this math block became a psychological thing, because I have found later in life that I love math and I am very good at it). When I started high school in Illinois, I was in honors classes, despite the fact that I had missed at least two months of school in eight grade because of a hip problem. When we moved to Dallas, my counselor (a white woman) automatically put me in the vocational track, even though my family made it clear I was going to college and there was no question about it. I didn’t dispute this, because I didn’t know better. I trusted her to do right by me, because she was an authority figure (naïve of me). It was only when my new counselor, a black woman intervened and changed my courses, slotting me into honors courses, which weren’t difficult at all for me. I thank her to this day for believing and fighting for me! I like to think she helped a lot of students in the same way because she cared about each one, regardless of their color. I even had a teacher who told me to my face, she didn’t know I was so smart. Yeah, that’s crazy, but it’s true. Also, there was the issue of how the administration treated black students. You could stand in the office for at least five minutes without being acknowledged. Every white person who came in got acknowledged immediately. I wasn’t being sensitive about this. It’s a fact.

I won’t even go into all my varied racial experiences at college. Suffice it to say that I got a lot of looks that said that I didn’t belong at the school I attended (one of the big public universities in Texas, not the one in Austin, but one of their rivals). Other than that, the anonymity of being only a student id number was very freeing for me. It didn’t matter what my color was. I got the same chance as everyone else. I relished that. And vet school, more of that jumping through hoops. More justifying that I deserved to be here, and I didn’t get her because of Affirmative Action. Yes, racism exists. It hardens a person, especially if you let it. Personally, I try not to.

How about in the literary world (a special interest since I am a die-hard bookworm)? Why is it that I can’t see a person who looks like me on a Harlequin cover unless it’s under the Kimani line? Maybe I want to read a Harlequin Presents with a black person. I like those stories, and maybe I don’t like the kinds of stories they do in the Kimani line. Why do I have to read those just to read about black people? Why do blacks have to have their romances segregated? Why is it that any books written by a black person automatically end up in the African American section, most of which at Walmart fall under the Thug Lit category? How is that right for a writer to be judged just because she’s black? It’s not!

What about urban fantasy and paranormal romance covers that show a light skinned woman with straight hair who could be white, when you open the book and the character is brown-skinned with curly, African hair? Why does this offend whites to have a black person on the cover? Why, on earth should it offend you when you are reading about humans having relationships demons, vampires, werewolves, and other varieties of paranormal creatures? As a black person less worthy than a demon? This is 2012 people! It offends me that it offends them. Do I not belong here in America, and deserve the same freedoms? Hey, my family has been here over two hundred years, if you count my Native American ancestry and my African ancestors. I am just as American as most whites, and probably more American since some of their ancestors came over after mine did. I don’t say this to be contentious (since let’s face it, we were all immigrants at some point), but these are the things that go through my head when I am smacked in the face with pervasive racism.

As far as ambitions and desires, I would say they are the same as a white woman. I want to be loved, have the same marriage prospects (any man I choose regardless of his race), have children and a family, have financial security, have emotional freedom, be recognized for my contributions to the world, like whatever music I want, read whatever books I want, and have my interest require validation only by me. I want the same freedom to be me without having to qualify everything I do with, “As a black person..” It shouldn’t matter. I should just be able to exist and be me! Instead, I have always felt I had to jump higher, work harder, strive more, just to prove I deserved what I worked hard for. It gets tiring. It does.

Yes, I can look at myself as a human being. That’s what I want to do, first and foremost. Actually, I think of myself as Christian first, and a human second. I like being able to look at myself so simply. I like that freedom. At the end of the day, I think a white woman would want that same freedom.

In my next post on this issue, I will focus on the Woman aspects more. This post is more focused on the black person aspect.