Those pictures are of a girl who trusted the camera without question. She loved to have her picture taken until the world inadvertently told her she had no right to. The phrase “she’s no oil painting” reminds me that the world has decided what—and therefore who—is worthy to be captured in pictures. Within the narrow confines of what the world generally considered beautiful—a sea of Whiteness and the worship of White features—my round Black face just couldn’t find its place. I had no idea how long this went on for until quite recently. I was asked to provide a selection of photographs of me between my midteens and my twenties. I couldn’t find any.
It’s impossible for me to pinpoint the exact moment or day or week or year I purposely began avoiding the camera. What I do know now, however, is that this act (an indirect form of rebellion, perhaps against the pressures to constantly consider my own reflection) was inspired by a cacophony of obvious and unlikely suspects. The media was one of the early culprits. It had a major impact on my idea of beauty and where I fell in relation to it. Like everyone else, I was surrounded by its messaging, living it, breathing it . . . like carbon dioxide. I was totally unaware of the toxic effect it was slowly having on me. Like generations before me I had been indoctrinated to desire “White-behaving hair.” Women swishing their golden locks in hair adverts made me wish for long movable hair—cue decades of burning my scalp with the creamy crack and seeking ever more “realistic” weaves (Peruvian, Mongolian, and Indian) that, ironically, of course never resembled what grew out of my scalp. Women and models I saw in magazines never looked like me. It wasn’t just that they were White; their celebrated bodies and features were not something I recognized in Black women around me. Where my dark full lips shamelessly jutted out, theirs were “cute” rosy pinks that were pretty, polite, and restrained.
At age thirteen or fourteen I became slightly obsessed with the shape of supermodel Linda Evangelista’s thighs, so I spent the best part of a year doing thigh-trimming exercises. I also began to dream about having a thinner nose. I was mocked for my nose by both Black and White people. A boy at school asked if the flatness was a result of “bashing into doors.” He said it looked like a squashed tomato. As soon as I could afford it, I told myself, I would be having a nose job. In the meantime, I had no money so I took homemade measures. I spent hours every week pinching my nose, convinced it would help with the reshaping process. Once I tried wearing a clothes-peg on my nose. I discovered my threshold for physical pain was pretty low. As a prebedtime ritual, I began to use Sellotape to mold my nose into the perfect shape. In the morning I would stare at the mirror, convinced I could see teeny changes. I imagined how much better my nose—and my life—would be without such a wide bridge. The world would be my oyster! I could be a singer! I could be famous! Every one of my friends wanted to be a singer because why on earth would you want to be anything else? (I hear so many Black schoolgirls singing at the back of the top deck of a bus in the hope they’ll be discovered by some bigwig US music producer who just so happens to be taking the 196 bus from Norwood to Brixton Town Hall, and I smile wryly. Yes, I used to be you.) My singing voice was at best mediocre—which is why it is so galling when White people assume that being a Black churchgoer means you’re a descendant of Aretha. I still cringe at being made to sing “Killing Me Softly” at the final night of my graduate trainee away day. It took me a while to admit to myself that despite their cheers and applause, I was dreadful. Yes, there were times I held notes, but mostly I was flat as a pancake. I was never going to make it. Actually, that’s not true, is it? The inability to sing certainly hasn’t held back a good proportion of the music industry. That said, most don’t have the darkness of my skin or the wideness of my nose to contend with.
Many discussions about representation and what counts as beautiful tend to look at the problem as a Black and White one. It is so much more convoluted and layered than that. We as people of color, even while many of us have been enlightened and educated as to where the self-hate originates, are still so culpable in reinforcing Eurocentric ideals of beauty. Many years ago, I met a family friend for the first time. He had met only one of my sisters at that time. My late mother was a very light-skinned woman with thick long jet-black hair. These simple facts meant she was automatically considered beautiful. My sister took after her. I, by contrast, was a carbon copy of my dark-skinned father. This family friend seemed almost shocked that I was related to my sister. “Yes,” a family member agreed, “this is the most African looking one.” The words, which haunted me for years, rolled out as if looking African were the most terribly unfortunate incident to befall a woman. At school Black girls with “coolie hair,” hair that took on a slight Indian texture, hair that was not “tough” and Afro-like, were immediately deemed more beautiful by Black girls. I never had coolie hair. Instead I would sometimes draw the “picki (nappy) head” insult. Ironically, these days, because I wear my natural hair in a slick dancer’s bun (helped by Aunt Jackie’s Flaxseed Gel), I have random Black women telling me I have “good hair.” At school I would have dined out on this. Now it is a term that repulses me. I look at the Black beauty YouTube and influencer community. Every how-to video I have ever watched involves a makeup and contouring step that thins out the nose. I look at the Black women who are the most successful and lauded in the entertainment industry—the romantic leads, the stars of beauty campaigns and music videos; they are predominantly lighter skinned or have Eurocentric features. And when we talk about those Black women whose skin, size, and hair—Lizzo, Lupita, Viola—don’t fit into the norms of what we’ve been fed is beautiful, what we say without explicitly saying it is, “In spite of your hair, size, skin color, you are beautiful, but there is not enough space for more than one of you in your categories because essentially you still don’t fit the beauty ideal.” It’s the ultimate backhanded compliment. This mindset filters into real life. There is still no space for a Black woman like me in the traditional constructs of beauty.
That I now work in the beauty industry is an irony that has not escaped me. My job calls for me to think and write about beauty in its most cursory form as well as to consider its much deeper and layered impact in a way that is not just linked to race. Nevertheless, I am essentially still navigating a world that has long rejected people who look like me—from makeup that doesn’t suit my skin tone to hair products that cannot communicate with my hair type to sheet masks made for narrow noses. . . . This is evolving, so increasingly I am surrounded by a myriad of beauty ideals. We now have beauty brands spouting diversity, inclusivity, body positivity. They pat themselves on the back because their latest campaign now includes a dark face, someone with textured hair, a girl bigger than size zero, a hijab-wearing model. . . . See how forward thinking we are? Everything’s changed!
But has it? Sometimes I wonder if this is just a mirage. What the world sees and what the world accepts are two very different things. I have worked and consulted for numerous brands and publications. Unequivocally, the worst-performing images on their social media feeds are those that are as far away from the White and Eurocentric ideal as you can get. So of course their immediate reaction is to park the unappetizing images, the ones that give them the fewest likes, and replace them with the types of images their consumers and readers prefer to engage with. So for all the talk of inclusivity, there is still an appetite for a certain idealized beauty, and I have seen the consequences. I once gave a talk in front of an audience about Black beauty and the issues we as women of color have to navigate. Afterward, a young, beautiful, very dark-skinned lady came to speak to me. She was an aspiring singer and told me about the challenges she faced trying to break into the music industry. Despite being a natural tomboy, she was expected to be hypersexy and wear weaves, which she said she’d consider if she could overcome her biggest “problem.” “I am struggling to cut a break because of this,” she said, pointing to her face. “My skin is so dark. . . .” We both held back tears. It was heartbreaking.