European beauty standards or nah?

In our society, European beauty standards are forced on African American women. In other words, we have to adapt to another standard of beauty instead of embracing our own. This ranges from our hair texture, the size of our lips and skin complexion. The picture above is a before and after picture of the talented and beautiful, Beyonce Knowles Carter. Can you tell which picture has been retouched? In the first photo, Beyonce’s complexion is darker, her hair is brown, her eye color is her natural color. However, when you look at the second photo there are major differences. Her skin complexion is lighter, her eye color is lighter, and so is her hair color. Do you see anything wrong with the first picture? No, right? I thought the same thing. Through a societal lens, the first picture is obviously too “African” and it should be more European to be attractive. The underlying message that lies between these two pictures is telling African-American women that their African features aren’t beautiful. On social media, I see a lot of black men putting down black women. They say things like they’d choose a light skin and/or white women over a dark and/or brown skin women. Why? Because in the society men live in, a woman who is lighter in color is beautiful. Historically this happened all the time, especially during slavery. The lighter women usually worked inside of the house and the darker ones worked out in the fields. Who we are as black women shouldn’t be judged by the pigment in our skin. It doesn’t matter if you are dark, brown or light skin we are all black and we’re all beautiful.