I believe that African-American females that are dark skin are at the bottom of the “beauty pole”. I have to work harder, be smarter, and under go a lot of outer appearance maintenance for me to be able to even be recognized by the black man as beautiful. The media has told me, I have to keep my hair done, I need to have freshly manicured nails, I have to be intellectually smart and street smart in order to compete with the average light skin female who may work hard on her outer appearance or be intelligent: African-American females that have lighter skin are considered beautiful naturally.
The Hip-Hop community portrays the perfect woman as light skin, long Hair, petite with a small waist, big hips, and thick lips. Therefore, most black men expect their women to look like this. I chalk this all up to the Willie Lynch theory back in the slave trade days. His theory was to high light & expand upon the differences between African slaves. From age, size, sex, size of plantation all the way down to the shade of their skin. He was successful because as the year went by more and more African-Americans started to believe that lighter skinned meant superiority. The closer a black woman looks to the blue eyed, blonde haired version of perfection, the better she is.
I am not considered equal to the video vixens in the music videos unless I have a weave and get plastic surgery. Dark has been considered a sign of dirty, evil and nasty. When I look at L’Oreal, or Cover Girl commercials they do not have dark skin African-American models, they have fair, almost white models representing African-American women. How is a young dark skin black girl supposed to believe in her natural beauty if someone is constantly throwing these images of beauty at her that do not look anything like her?
On the radio I constantly hear “Badd Yellabone” which is the term used to identify a black female who is light skin with a big butt. Nevertheless, my mother taught me an affirmation a long time ago that we still say today. She will say “You so black” and I respond “Look into the depths of my eyes and you can see my ancestors, I am just a manifestation of their beauty”.