Is Colorism Killing Your Self Esteem?

    From childhood, little girls are conditioned to love compliments. Families coddle their daughters with terms like "Pretty" "Sweetie" "Beautiful" "Adorable" etc. Little girls are taught to be feminine and soft hearted. They're taught to keep their hair kempt, and clothes polished. As those little girls are growing up, they are bombarded by the mainstream media's perception of beauty. It's in magazines, on television, on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and many other popular sites. For young black women there seem to be an added layer of pressure as they grow older. The strong impact of European beauty standards  continue to be displayed in a lot of prominent celebrities and social media influencers. There isn't much representation of the diverse looks in black culture. Most of the time a woman of lighter complexion with finer facial features and long hair is the "token" representation of beauty in the mainstream media for black women. So many different opinions are out there on why this is.  I honestly don't know why there is such poor representation of black women out there.  I do feel like if it was considered normal to see different types of black women in the limelight then maybe some black women wouldn't feel as restricted with their looks. There are workplace and school policies that stop natural hair from being accepted in certain styles. It's really sad that with all the fights for social justice, we still haven't broken through these confining issues. We are stuck with imagery of what multimedia presents and in return some of us nitpick ourselves. We definitely don't feel like our hair is long enough, our noses is thin enough, our stomach is flat enough, and some of us struggle with loving our complexions as well. If you don't, that is wonderful because you've overcame the influence of pop culture. If you do struggle with these things, I challenge you to observe what you're looking at daily. When you log onto IG, what pictures do you view? When you're on YouTube, what channels do you give views? When you're done looking at these things do you feel worse about yourself? WE HAVE TO START REDEFINING BEAUTY in our culture. We have to open up our minds to accept things we can't change about ourselves and figure out how to love those imperfections. Surgery can fix external things, but not internal struggles inside. I'm not saying it's easy, but sometimes we need to unplug from seeing voluptuous IG models and perfectly made up YouTube beauty gurus. We can take time away from our screens and figure out how to be the person we want to be. I'm not saying anything is wrong with being inspired by others, but be careful not to become consumed in vanity and frustrated about not looking like photoshopped, blemish free, perfect fit celebs. If you read this blog, I'd like to thank you first, then ask you to ask yourself who do you think is the prettiest black celebrity or social media influencer? Does the person that came to mind fit the description of what I describe is considered  the "token" image of beauty in the black community? 

Until Next Time, 

Dx3

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