osunism:

The whole conversation about letting girls be gross and ugly and monstrous and undesirable only applies to white women, and to a lesser extent, nonblack women of color.

Black women have never in the history of ever been allowed even be considered fully-realized human beings, let alone a standard of beauty to aspire to. If anything, due to white supremacy and antiblackness being a global thing, Black women are always placed as the absolute antithesis to the Eurocentric beauty standards everyone strives for. We’re the polar opposite.

And I don’t include nonblack WOC in the beauty discussion because they play into the hierarchy as well. East Asian, Indian, Latinx, etc. All of them get to be considered feminine as long as Black women exist to be held up against as some sort of antithesis to beauty. And the only way Black women are afforded any humanity and considered beautiful is if we look less Black to begin with and are lighter skinned. The closer we are to Eurocentric, the prettier we’re considered. There is literally a multibillion dollar industry that is destroying West and Central Africa right now dedicated to SKIN BLEACHING just so people can be afforded more leniency and privileges that lighter skinned or nearly-white people get within white supremacist patriarchal systems. There’s no widespread practice of women darkening their skin to be more desirable (tanning doesn’t count as that’s another discussion entirely), or texturizing their hair to make it more attractive. Or gaining weight to seem more desirable.

It’s especially bad if we’re dark skinned and don’t have the skinny minnie body type. And if we’re dark skinned, with less Eurocentric features, our beauty has to be more performative and exhausting. Our skin has to be absolutely flawless, our hair must be perfect–even if we have 4c hair–and our makeup must always be on or on point.

And this is just to be afforded the bare minimum of attraction and humanity. Like, it has been scientifically proven that statistically, Black women are considered the LEAST desirable women in! The! World!

So miss me with that “let girls be ugly and disgusting” talk because the world has already been telling Black women that we are just that since time immemorial.