"I know I'm overcompensating. From the time I was in school, I rarely felt physically attractive, but I regularly garnered praise for how I was perfectly put together. The boys ignored my existence except to point out the size of my behind while the girls fawned over my styles. That still sticks (as most of our childhood baggage does)...
Black women are no strangers to invisibility. We all want to be acknowledged, and constantly getting overlooked is hurtful and demoralizing. Pushing back against the forces that tell us we are unworthy with outlets like this is my life's goal. But I'm still working on me.
I'll be the first to jump on anyone who comes at the gorgeous natural hair sistas, but I always get confused stares after my rants. A single glance at my waist length weave seems to betray my true allegiances. The fact is that in many ways my own idea of aesthetic perfection ignores Black beauty and my West African heritage. That is difficult to admit, but that is the space I currently occupy."
The struggle. I feel like I'm on the other side of this right now, growing up with this idea that I had to be "above" vanity or focuses on appearance - and, beyond that, the idea that there wasn't really a way for me to be beautiful, children's media in the 90s worshipped pale skin and long straight hair and delicate features and I didn't see any examples of people who looked like me being beautiful. It was stereotype threat sort of, or the general fear of trying to do something you really can't do and being mocked for your failures; it was psychologically easiest to just remove myself from that game.
And, theoretically, that made me a better person, right? Not regulated by the male gaze (which at that age I probably would have expressed as 'not trying to be those background dancers in music videos that they put there for teen boys to look at'). Able to focus on my inside world, like a true academic, a true future scientist.
And then I was 15 and I tried on a pair of jeans that looked really good. And I bought this jacket (that, looking back, was kinda hideous) and I just felt good wearing the jacket, I didn't hate my body as much when I wore it, I kind of wanted people to look at me. I was in the height of that age where you feel like everyone is scrutinizing you, and I realized that I could feel better about that if I felt happy and confident about what they were going to see. It was exhausting to try not to care, it was freeing to feel okay about it.
And then recently, I was added to this incredible facebook community devoted to women of color and beauty. People from all over the world who identify with "woman of color" post pictures of themselves when they are feeling beautiful despite Western beauty norms, when they are feeling beautiful because of Western beauty norms, when they are wearing an outfit that makes them feel like they are expressing their identities, when they just discovered an amazing new makeup line, when they want to complain about white communities that have appropriated something, when they are NOT feeling attractive but want to take ownership of it and talk about it.
Seeing these amazing people who are proudly and empoweringly doing beauty despite and outside of American white-centered beauty
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