WHAT STRANGE
BEAUTY Part 2
Written by Danielle Eliska Lyle
"That's why you black."
5th and 6th grade spectators jeered and instigated the two girls facing off. Immediately a playground argument became a fistfight. Just as knuckles and nails met flesh, a schoolteacher spotted the scuffle from afar and hurried toward the crowd. She had to push her way through the group of kids to get to the two at war. She grabbed both girls, separating them from one another. The schoolteacher was so upset at the sight of bloody noses and torn clothes.
"What
is wrong with you all? Why are you fighting?" the schoolteacher asked.
A
dead silence fell over the playground.
The little girl with the bruised eye replied, "She called me black." "
...but I am black, as if deprived of light..." -William Blake, The Little Black Boy
For centuries, black skin has been the definition of physical and mental slavery. I've heard stories of black women going to extreme measures to become white. "Nineteenth century Negro women rubbed lye and other acidic products, used to remove dirt from floors, directly on their skin. Homemade blends of lemon juice, bleach, and urine were smeared on faces and limbs; some women swallowed arsenic wafers, and others took bleach baths, all in pursuit of making their dark skin turn light" (Divided Sisters, p. 75). The larger goal was to gain the approval of white society because they were the initial recognition of refinement. In order for blacks to be accepted, they had to imitate white society.
In the south during slavery, slave owners chose mulatto women as house slaves. They would be a nanny to the slave owner's children, a cook, a seamstress, and even a mistress. Slave owners believed the darker complexion slaves were stronger and could tolerate the sun. Lighter skin was related to intelligence, while darker skin was defined as strength. This way of thinking influenced the slaves' mentality. Light skinned slaves believed they were superior to the darker slaves. Although the mulatto women were still considered slaves, they were treated "better" because of their European characteristics. This philosophy was bequeathed through generational teachings. According to Divided Sisters "once the civil war ended, the mulatto elite, as they called themselves, sought to maintain their status by doing business only with each other and establishing preparatory schools and colleges that denied admission to applicants who were dark" (p. 74).
According to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, black is defined as "soiled, as from soot; evil, sinister, cheerless and depressing; angered; calamitous; a form of humor dealing with the abnormal and grotesque aspects of life and society and evoking a sense of comedy of human despair and failure; Any member of the Negroid people; a Negro". Not only is black associated with lewdness, but also absurdity and hopelessness.
I suffered from mainstream insecurities. I grew up in an era where light skin was in. High schools had modern-day Blue Vein Societies. Status was based on complexion. If you were "fair", guys adored you and girls envied you. But if you were darker than a paper bag, you were called names like, "African booty scratcher", "tar baby", or "blackie". These insults rang in the subconscious, slowly killing self-confidence. Darker girls were never "able to hide" but they were "treated as invisible" (p. 247).
"In the name of beauty, women in non-Western cultures have broken and flattened their noses, decoratively scarred their faces and bodies, elongated their necks, stretched their lips, put on a shine to enhance the blackness of their skin, lengthened their earlobes, flattened their heads--we call it disfigurement, never pausing to think that the anorexic slimness or extreme pallor that we have at one time or another admired so much is, to people of other cultures, equally 'ugly'." (Face Value, 248).
Over the years I became comfortable with deception, accepting the philosophy taught to my ancestors years ago. I had to unlearn the disgrace and release the insecurities of a western culture too afraid to admit to the exotic beauty of skin so black. The idea that "lighter is better" is an attempt to convince natural beauty to hide behind images seen in paper doll books, allowing America to chose our appearance. You will find someone always trying to modify black natural beauty to emulate those seen on flat screen TV's. It will be a battle, but black women can be free from the opinion of man.
I was 22 years old when I finally accepted the skin I'm in.
REFERENCES:
Lakoff, Robin and Raquel Scherr. Face Value: The Politics of Beauty New
York: Routledge, 1988.
Wilson, Midge and Russell, Kathy. Bridging the Gap Between Black Women and White Women: Divided Sisters New York: Anchor Books, 1996.
Houghton Mifflin Company. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language Boston, 1981.
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