Brown Skin Lady... How Do you Feel?

Do you identify with any of these images?

Hello Everyone!

Being a lover of makeup  and all things beautiful, the earth would be off kilter if I were to ignore the on going discussion about standards of beauty. As a lot of you may know, this issue is confronted on different levels pretty much on a daily basis -deliberate or not. It has been a desire of mine to play an important role in balancing the scales and leveling the playing field in regards to representation and diversity in the images of beauty. 

We all have our preferences and our own opinions about beauty, but how much of your opinion was formed through the limited exposure of diverse imagery in our society? How much of an influence does euro-centric standards of beauty have on your own standards? Do you feel as if the image of women - Black women in particular is portrayed in a positive light? What is beautiful to you? As stubborn and opinionated as I am, I can honestly say that there aren't any wrong answers. I would just like it for people to have an open  mind and love themselves. That would lead to wonderful infinite possibilities.

What I am getting at is that if everyone truly loved their own skin tone and facial features or better yet, if positive images of minorities were popular/main stream, the self-hate wouldn't trickle down as much to infect the masses the way that it has for eons. I'm not going to debate the straight hair thing, because, that is a touchy topic for some. The observation that is more universal is the blatant efforts to white wash beauty and to make other ethnicities invisible. I mean it's everywhere: hollywood, magazines, internet and personal care products. From the legacy of slavery to present day, it's pretty inescapable.  And to me, that is criminal. 

Black women seem to bare the brunt of this assault. If it's not music videos, movies (mammies, over sexed vixens, emasculated heroines and Angelina playing a bi-racial woman - wtf?!?!) ad campaigns etc. - it's the lack there of on pretty much every front. We often are objectified or ignored. Often times the negative images and/or the revering of euro-centric beauty creates a negative self-image. That negative self-image is then internalized and seeps into our everyday lives. This can lead to perpetuating and promoting the exact same negative images that were forced upon us.  The question is how do we battle this problem? How do we teach young Black girls that their own beauty is to be celebrated and honored?

My Black AND Beautiful friends, Sarina and Shelise

Black is beautiful to me. I absolutely love, love ALL shades of brown.  But I think that we all know that we don't get to see all of those shades represented in a positive manner in our society- especially in entertainment, consumer ads and media. We should ALL know that there are particular types of women of color that are promoted as the end-all, be-all standard of beauty. They are your usual suspects: Halle, Beyonce, Rhianna, Halle, Beyonce, halle, beyonce, ellah, ecnoyeb. There is no denying the beauty of these women, however, there also cannot be any denial of the beauty of the REST of the women throughout the Black Diaspora that may not fit that celebrated standard. Pushing this standard onto the masses only leads to  unrealistic desires and worst of all, self-hate. 

This being a life long issue for Black women, I was pleased to stumble across Proctor&Gamble's My Black is Beautiful campaign. Rather than repeatedly responding and accepting negative images of Black women derived from a racist past, Procter & Gamble's Director of Multicultural Marketing, Najoh Tita-Reid  decided to develop an initiative celebrating the personal and collective beauty of Black women - regardless of  their skin tone, shape or hair texture.

"History proves that when we gather together behind a common mission and take control of our future, we can change the world", Najoh explains. "My Black is Beautiful is a movement designed to ignite a national conversation by, for and about Black women to effect positive change in the way Black women are reflected in popular culture. My Black is Beautiful encourages African-american women to define and promote a beauty standard that is an authentic reflection of their spirit."

This initiative encourages women to go to myblackisbeautiful.com to download it's discussion guide in order to conduct conversations in small groups. The goal of this conversation group is to celebrate Black beauty and self-determination. It gets women to open up and share their feelings. It also provides women of different age groups the opportunity to network, deepen relationships, strengthen community ties and advocate on behalf of African-American women's health, education and economic empowerment.

The manifesto for the initiative goes like this:

Dialog is definitely important to tackle issues such as self-image and beauty. Let's keep it going.  Please share your thoughts.