"With images of white beauty so dominant around the world, the pressure to conform is immense."
This quote comes from the second episode of '
Bleach, Nip, Tuck: The White Beauty Myth' and it really hit home.
For most of my life, I wanted to be white because I thought white people were prettier. It was so bad that it made me cringe to self-identify as black. Did I ever admit this? No way. Not to myself or anyone else. I hid all of my insecurities whilst posing at angles that made my nose look thinner and straightening my hair. I've been doing things like that ever since I was a child, I'm twenty-five now. I've never wanted surgery, but that doesn't take away the same self-destructive mindset that a lot of non-white people express.
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| "To fit into this society, you've got to look a bit more sort of, European." -- Jet |
Another person in the documentary, Mun, says that, as an aspiring model, he believes that he will succeed more if he gets rid of his Asian features so he wants surgery. Is there some truth in it?
The images of white beauty are constant. Simple unscientific exercise - Google the world 'beauty' and the images are overtaken by pale skin, even the minorities included in the search look white-passing which is almost just as bad.
People can say (and they would be correct) that there are very famous people of different races who
are also beautiful, successful etc but the number is low compared to
that of their white counterparts.
I'm sure that the intention is not to isolate people who are not white or white-passing but well-meaning intentions mean nothing if the result is bad.
You cannot blame these people for feeling insecure, you need to look at what's
causing the - very recurring - problem in the first place and try to remedy it. How? There should be more diversity in the races and skin-types that are prominent in the media so that people like me feel a positive sense of identification. A black character thrown in here and there or in the background is not enough. There are exceptions, but that's usually the case. Obviously this will not solve everything, but it's a step in the right direction.
"I have been affected by growing up in San Diego in a white world. When you look at magazines and TV and the media in the U.S. you see gorgeous women, but you don't see gorgeous Asian women. You see white women because that is how beauty is portrayed in American culture."-- Shin-Yu Wang on Asians who want to emulate a 'whiter' style
This is a very loose theory based off something I read but people often look to the media to find themselves in the people they see....and if all they really see are white people, they may either feel a sense of loss if they're not white, or they want to be like who they see, whether that's thin, long-haired, or pale-skinned/white. I recently saw a
picture of a black child looking at Lupita Nyong'o on the cover of Vogue with the caption, 'She just stared for the longest time.'
I talk about race and representation way more in this blog post, and wrote a short poem about it.
Tahira, a Bangladeshi woman in the documentary, talked about feeling discrimination from her own community because she's dark-skinned - Asians prefer lighter skin.
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| "They like you because you're fair and beautiful. I have a problem - my skin colour is my problem." |
With Tahira however, I'm not sure that she wanted to be white, but instead paler. She said she dreams of being white, but is it a race thing or a skin tone thing? I don't know
Even so, members of other ethnic communities see paler skin as better, which is natural among white people, but less so of races who normally have darker skin. Like people trying to imitate photoshopped celebs, we can't 'win'.
[S]kin lighteners are all the rage, with a lighter skin tone being openly acknowledged as being “better” and associated with beauty and intelligence amongst black communities. [x]
I have always...always had a preference for lighter skin, and I'm not alone. I know it's irrational to think that that white is best, completely....yet I still sometimes feel unattractive in my dark skin.
Can I also make a reference to
the doll test? Children were given two identical - aside from skin colour - dolls and told to pick the one they liked and the one they didn't like. Guess which doll most of them preferred?
If any child says that their skin is bad because it's dark or that they want to be white....that's enough of a red flag.
People may compare the wish to get surgery to be more European-looking to fat people wishing to be thinner. I understand the link completely, but I find race a bigger issue. It's not easy, but it's possible to change your weight...it is not possible to change your race, no matter what surgeries you get.
As long as white ideals of beauty dominate global culture, many will feel the pressure to alter their ethnic features. -- Bleach, Nip, Tuck: The White Beauty Myth
In this documentary, a black man (after hearing about Jet's
desire to surgically alter her 'Caribbean nose') got very defensive,
saying that people should be proud of what they look like and that it's
foolish to want to look white. People get really angry about this. I can see
exactly where he's coming from but at the same time, these people have
picked up on racism, white supremacy, maybe even bullying to the point where they'd rather just conform to what everyone else looks like.
Instead of putting these people down, people should
be thinking about why so many people around the world feel like this.
I've
had a look at the comments about the documentary and people are saying
that these people need professional help and that they don't understand
why they're doing it. They don't understand because they've never felt
it, they find it absurd because they are coming at it from a totally different
perspective, especially if they're white and have never experienced racism (please don't go there with 'white people can experience racism' because it's 100% not the same,
especially in this context).
Listen to the person who feels oppressed, don't try to find ways of telling them they're wrong.
On
the flip side, people say, 'Love yourself,' and, 'But you're beautiful'.....but it's not always that easy to fix. How can you tell someone who has likely felt the same way for years to suddenly see themselves in a different light? It's a gradual process for the most part, so be patient with them.
I don't think that all ethnic minorities who want a thinner nose, thinner lips, paler skin,
double-eyelid surgery etc are doing it to look more Western, so the reasoning behind the preference has to be taken into consideration. However, how many people would be willing to admit that they want to look more Western? Not even that, how many people
realise that they want to look more Western? A lot of people may be in denial or so scared to admit it that they make excuses - I definitely did!
Like I already said, it's easy to tell people to love themselves, so I won't. Instead I'll say - the reason why white beauty is promoted so intensely is because the people in power are usually white,
it has nothing to do with white being best. Actively seek out examples of beauty and success from your own race and realise that the definition of greatness is not defined as 'white'.
My self-confidence is a lot better than it was and I feel okay posing head-on, acknowledging that yeah, I have a thick nose, but whatever, I look cute sometimes. Suck it, insecurities.
I wanted to talk more about black people who change their hair to escape their natural locks, but soon realised after watching a few things that it needed its own blog post - I'll be writing that later today.
