When you look at a black woman’s face, you gaze at a pair of deep-set of brown eyes, a rounded nose, full lips and bronzed mahogany skin. When you look at a black woman’s body, you see a physique with voluptuous curves, full breasts, rounded hips and a derriere to make any man weak at the knees.
While black women have had these features since the beginning of time, we have become the poster child for ridicule. Yet the ones ridiculing us are the same who imitate us. Over the last 20 years, black women’s body parts have been trending around the world: tanning for darker skin, injections for fuller lips and most recently, implants for a considerably larger butt.
Recently, one of the youngest of the Kardashian clan, Kylie Jenner, revealed her new set of inflated lips on Instagram. Whether or not her lips are surgically enhanced or the work of masterful makeup techniques, her goal was to achieve fuller lips. After her viral post, many bloggers were going crazy creating tutorials on how to achieve the look. Articles were posted online about which products to use to temporarily enhance your pout or make your lips appear larger.
While Kylie’s full lips have seemed to start quite a trend within the beauty world, I can’t help but wonder where her idea of full lips stemmed from. Women of color are notoriously known for their full set of lips; however, we haven’t exactly received the same attention for them as Kylie has.
Kylie’s sister Kim is another great example of how black features are trending. Kim Kardashian is famous for her remarkably large butt. Women all over the world are putting their lives in danger attempting to surgically enhance their body in hopes of having the dream derriere Kim has. But while her body is quite enviable now, her bottom half wasn’t as nearly as desirable when black women were sporting it centuries ago.
In the 1800s, Sarah Baartman, a black woman from South Africa, was captured and forced to tour around the world as a “freak” in a freak show because of her considerably large assets. She amused onlookers and was subjected to many “examinations” by several professors. For a large portion of her life, she was looked at as a sideshow act rather than an actual human being, simply because of the shape of her body — the same shape that is currently trending today.
We live in a society where the standard of beauty changes constantly, but the stereotypical model has remained, and probably will always remain, the same: a Caucasian woman. Minorities are constantly told that they are not the archetypal symbol of beauty, and yet their features, body parts and skin color are. Black women’s skin is too dark, Asian women’s hair is too straight and Hispanic women are too curvy. Yet, when these specific cultural traits are featured on Caucasian women, they are deemed beautiful. It’s time to start acknowledging the beauty in all women, rather than one specific race.
