Colorism is a cultural institution that has skewed access to opportunity by consistently placing those with lighter skin in positions of privilege. This is why things like paper bag tests and comb tests proliferated in some parts of higher-income Black communities. For the paper bag test, a paper bag would be held against your skin and if you were darker than the bag, you weren’t admitted to a nightclub, a fraternity, or sometimes even a church. The comb test functioned in a similar manner: if you couldn’t pass a fine-tooth comb through your hair, then you were locked out of certain social circles. Even now, if you watch the “natural hair gurus” who become influencers and make a significant amount of income, they tend to be lighter skinned with a looser curl pattern.
And colorism means that lighter skin yields real-world advantages in every community. Campaigns for skin-bleaching products make a point of highlighting lighter skin being key not just to higher incomes, but to a better love life. As a result, lighter skin is so coveted that bleaching creams continue to be bestsellers in the United States, Asia, and other nations despite evidence of mercury poisoning, skin damage, and liver and other organ malfunctions. For many communities the potential rewards outweigh the risks because of societal pressure.
Similarly, looser hair texture is associated with success to the point that businesses and schools feel free to limit access based on it. Recently the US Eleventh Circuit Court ruled that discriminating against people with locs isn’t discrimination because hair texture is a mutable characteristic and thus isn’t a protected status, but statistically speaking those most likely to wear the style are of African descent, and race is a protected category under current laws against discrimination.
Colorism and texturism play out in so-called feminist spaces too. We already know that mainstream feminism isn’t immune to the prejudices attached to certain skin colors. And for some white women who might be unremarkable in majority white communities, moving into communities of color via spray-on tans, appropriating hairstyles like box braids, or even claiming to “feel Black” à la Rachel Dolezal (a white woman who continues to claim a right to identify as a Black woman despite having two white parents) can mean that they get to benefit from a colorist beauty standard without ever having to engage with the harm it does.
Despite claims to mean no harm, we all know that skin color continues to serve as the most obvious criterion in determining how a person will be treated. In America and around the world, because of deeply entrenched racism and anti-Blackness, we know that dark skin is demonized and light skin is generally prized. So it serves no one to feign ignorance of what it means to capitalize on fetishization and exoticism without doing anything to combat the problems most likely to be faced by those who are disadvantaged by these standards.
While Black feminism has been combating colorism for decades with campaigns against skin bleaching, pushing for better media representation of darker-skinned girls and women, and pushing the idea of beauty aesthetics that don’t center on whiteness, it’s not just a Black feminist issue. If we want to raise an empowered next generation of Black and Brown girls who can love themselves, love one another, and change the world, we need mainstream feminism to start calling out colorism and addressing it.
We know that white supremacist narratives around skin color have not just fueled self-hatred, depression, and anxiety for girls and women of color, they have also been used to justify white fragility narratives that contribute to the privileging of white women’s tears over the lives of women of color. Exotification isn’t freedom; any feminism that hinges on the fetishization of the beauty of women of color is toxic. In a media culture where even a Disney princess is subject to colorism, you have to ask why so many mainstream feminist narratives are more likely to call a dark-skinned woman powerful and not beautiful.
And then there’s the questions of size, of disability, of the ways that some body types are seen as more valuable than others. There’s a narrative that because Black women consistently report having higher self-esteem than white or Latina women, that means they don’t need the care or concern around beauty that other women do. But that higher level of self-esteem is built across time inside our communities, and not every girl gets the support that she needs to combat a culture that says her body is always going to be wrong.
It’s easy to say that beauty standards are superficial and unimportant when your skin color safely positions you at the top of someone’s beauty aesthetic. But, like everything else, beauty is political. Embracing as beautiful a body that isn’t adjacent to whiteness is an act of resistance, a way to keep alive the culture and community that colonialism and imperialism were attempting to crush.
Of course, pretty can be a privilege, but how that privilege functions varies wildly based on race. The same metric that might position a beautiful white woman as someone worthy of adoration or respect can be twisted to mean that a darker-skinned woman with similar features is read as not only sexually available but outright obscene simply for existing in public. It’s the proverbial tightrope over a snake pit.
Being taught you’re strong, you’re beautiful, you’re smart, you’re enough is a generational defense mechanism against discrimination. Even when the confidence isn’t really felt, you know that the more confident you appear, the better equipped you’ll be to deal with racism. As a result, a premium is placed on appearance. Body positivity originated in the Black community because skin shade, size, body type, and visible disabilities rendered many in the community outsiders even in spaces that were intended to be affirming. Even now beauty is complicated by class, the quality of hair purchased for a weave, the brand of clothes that can be afforded—these are all markers that signal whether your body has a right to be in the space it is occupying. And even if all the trappings are correct, there’s still the question of how your features may be commodified and presented as attractive on every body but the one you’re in when you’re not white.
The fad of white women being praised for altering their bodies, plumping their lips, and tanning their skin will fade. This dabbling in an exotic identity will disappear, but for dark-skinned women their oppression will remain largely unchanged, unless the racism and colorism in beauty culture and our broader culture is challenged.
Pretty comes with privileges, and when one’s health, wealth, and opportunity for success in this country are impacted by looks, by the color of your skin, and by the texture of your hair, who gets to define pretty matters. Colorism is so deeply ingrained in the fabric of this nation that we are all implicated in its impact for good or for ill. The pervasive color hierarchy is one that many communities are facing without a true mechanism to end it, as long as our cultures are interconnected, and ultimately, we need intra-racial and interracial solutions. We need cross-cultural dialogue about the impact of colorism before we can even begin to move on to really creating better, healthier beauty aesthetics.
Mainstream feminist engagement with beauty culture often centers on the male gaze and its impact, but that’s not the only toxic component. The ways that being white, cis, slim, and able-bodied are valorized must be addressed. As a movement feminism needs to be willing to move the needle, to interrogate the ways that it engages in colorist hierarchies internally. It needs to be open to asking why so many white feminists are willing to leave these problems to be solved by feminists of color. Equity in beauty culture requires investment from all sides, not just those who are least likely to have the power and privilege to make the most lasting change.