“Each night, without fail, she prayed for blue eyes. Fervently, for a year she had prayed. Although somewhat discouraged, she was not without hope. To have something as wonderful as that happen would take a long, long time.
Thrown, in this way, into the binding conviction that only a miracle could relieve her, she would never know her beauty. She would see only what there was to see: the eyes of other people.”
—-The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison
“More acutely than ever before Emma Lou began to feel that her luscious black complexion was somewhat of a liability, and that her marked color variation from the other people in her environment was a decided curse.”
“She should have been a boy, then color of skin wouldn’t have mattered so much, for wasn’t her mother always saying that a black boy could get along, but that a black girl would never know anything but sorrow and disappointment?”
—-The Blacker the Berry, Wallace Thurman
“If God has bestowed beauty upon her, it will prove her greatest curse. That which commands admiration in the white woman only hastens the degradation of the female slave.”
—-Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs
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Brought to you by the world Black literature, these are just a few instances of the ‘otherness’ of Black beauty. Whether we will admit it or not, this ‘otherness’ has affected us over the course of our lives. It has taken many of us a long time to accept our figures and faces, especially when we are constantly bombarded with images of women with so-called ‘fairer skins’ and Eurocentric features. Within our own communities, some of us have struggled to be accepted by family or by men because our looks didn’t fit the bill.
For the sake of healing and continued self-growth, The Perfected Woman Lecture Series will address the issue of Black beauty from both a social and cultural perspective. You’re invited to join in on this groundbreaking discussion and bring your friends and daughters along too.
For more details, visit The Perfected Woman Lecture Series page.
