I have decided to dedicate my life to promoting the beauty in women of color. Shades of brown are so beautiful, so unique and demonstrated in so many parts of the globe. Despite images depicted on television, magazines and billboards; the media would have you believe that beautiful women are not brown. Yet 75% of the women in the world are brown, meaning they have the ability to produce varying degrees of melanin in their skin. That means there are little girls all over the world who do not feel beautiful because they do not see images of women that look like them. How do you make a woman unsuccessful in life? Well the answer to this question is very complex and cannot be answered with quickly, I will tell you that a component of her failure is to make her feel ugly and unwanted, undesirable and unloved. Women, who feel good, look good and command a presence in their environments. This has a direct impact on their socio-economic success (or lack thereof), relational/emotional and psychological successes. When a women feels beautiful she can achieve anything. She will teach her brown daughters they can achieve anything….
During my 35 plus years on this earth, I have discovered that many times people will not understand your point of view until they have walked a mile in your shoes. To demonstrate my certainty on this stand point, I pose a situation to you….What if tomorrow it was decided by the “ powers that be” (television networks, print, internet, commercials, film industry) that only Black/African , Hispanic (including Dominican, Cuban, Central American and South American), Indian (includes India, Sri Lanka, Guinea, Melanasia and surrounding countries), Maori, Aboriginal and Polynesian women were the new standard of beauty. The darker you were, the more beautiful you were perceived instead of the current practice (the lighter shade of brown you are the more beautiful you are).
How would the non-brown women behave? What would they do if suddenly they were thrown to the bottom of the beauty chain? Would they go willingly or would they fight to maintain their status?
Many of you will look at this situation and judge it to be confrontational, please do not. I only ask this question to ask you to think. Think how this situation would apply to your life?
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed on this blogspot are to bring awareness. This question and many others to come are not meant to be racist, they are designed to make you aware of racism and unfair practices and you choose to be part of the problem or the solution.
Dr Clark,
ReplyDeleteI would love to continue supporting this cause and would be interested in partnering with you for the youth literacy group that I am in the process of putting together. Let's talk soon...
SD Denny, Author
The Baker's Dozen, a novel
Sharon, you are an amazing woman, author and demonstration of what I would like young girls to be like. I hope you know I support you in any way I can...Through knowledge you can achieve success and accomplishments. I sincerely believe in the model "each one teach one"
ReplyDeleteIf you don't know where you came from, you don't know where you are going...and if you cannot read at an appropriate level you cannot really know all that you need to.
I for one would like to see non-brown at the bottom of the “beauty hierarchy” and not for the reason to say “how to you like them apples” but maybe they can have a better understanding of beauty beyond themselves since they cannot think for themselves when it comes to defining beauty…It is the norm for them, their standard of beauty was created, molded and pushed on society for years and if you think about it, it does not start with non-brown women; it starts with non-brown men. They have the power and means to control it via media, internet, tv, commercials, tv shows, news, magazines etc…. They pushed the skinny, big breasted, blonde hair, blue eyes to the point where I think they are sick of it, evidence of this is they have selectively chosen features of women of color and pushed it on non-brown women to create a new an better model, a model that has the beautiful features and resembles a woman of color…well hey, close but no cigar… unless you are born with pigment in your skin no tan will ever last……temporary all day. Surgery to enhance your lips, hips, buttocks, breasts and cheeks are also temporary, dangerous, costly and is the true example of low color esteem and in the end they will sag and fade away as nature intend it to but will look much worse because genetically they don’t have the frame to support such a body or they would not have tried to get it in the first place. Are we living in a flip flop world… we need to stop..... non- brown women are seeking our beauty now that the world has given the ok to remold there definition of “beautiful” and women of color are again behind them trying to obtain the image of a non brown woman, hair is big on the list, ask Chris Rock, plastic surgery look at l’il Kim to name one and I need to go no further, she broke the mold on low color esteem…if we as women of color stop, think, look and listen…we have what they want already and they have accepted are unique body parts as beautiful…. just not on us… we should be able to change that. No I am not racist, I just don’t like how society (white, black, men and women) views me as a woman of color, and we all have a hand in the pot!
ReplyDeleteThank you, Dr. Clark...your words mean so much! And I thoroughly enjoyed reading Shaune's perspective on beauty,also. Very enlightening...
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