A woman's beauty is a hard currency: women who are considered beautiful enjoy significant social and material benefits. But beauty is also culturally constructed, with each culture setting its own standards. For decades, Black women have endured a race-based hierarchy of beauty in which they are treated as inferior to their non-black counterparts. But is the Eurocentric standard of beauty changing?

Historical Context

The devaluation of black beauty has deep historical roots. In 1605, Queen Anne of Denmark performed in blackface, impersonating African nymphs who were 'distressed' by their 'ugly blackness' and wanted to be 'whitened' into beauty by means of her husband's 'masculine White royal agency.' The performance included the telling lines:

"Yield, night, then, to the light, as blackness hath to beauty, which was but the same duty. It is for beauty that the world was made, and where she reigns love's lights admit no shade."

Similarly, Saartjie Baartman, born in 1789, was thought by White people to have a bottom that was 'unnaturally large' even though her body was similar to the bodies of other women in her community. Her punishment for her body being as it was? To be exhibited as a freak show attraction.

Even today's elite athletes face similar prejudice. Tennis champion Serena Williams endured body shaming from Maria Sharapova. Social media amplifies these attitudes—one Twitter troll told political commentator Candace Owens that her mixed-race baby would 'never be beautiful' because she lacked Caucasian features. A stunning Black model was told by her agent that her 'too African' nose was the primary barrier to career success.

Colourism: Racism's Baby Sister

Colourism—prejudice against individuals with darker skin, often within the same racial group—is the Black community's painful secret. This stems from historical trauma: mass rape by White slave masters created cohorts of light-skinned women who received preferential treatment, not having to work in fields or do back-breaking labour.

The statistics are staggering. According to Harvard University research, 77% of women in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East use skin lightening products, despite known health risks including cancer. The skin lightening industry will be worth $31.2 billion by 2024. In Africa, there are literally huge billboards advertising skin bleaching products all over the continent. In some communities, parents bleach their daughters' skin from age 8 to make them appear more valuable and beautiful, so desperate are consumers to conform to Eurocentric notions of beauty.

French-Malian singer Aya Nakamura was advised by the music industry to bleach her skin to "reach a wider audience." She recalled feeling "stunned for a while," realizing "this business was going to be really tough for a dark-skinned woman like me." Studies show light-skinned women are more than twice as likely to be married as dark-skinned women. Black women with natural hairstyles are less likely to get job interviews, deemed 'unprofessional' by study participants. There are far too many stories of Black women whose self-loathing, as a result of their blackness, leads them to crushing levels of low self-esteem, and, in some cases, suicide.

The infamous 'Straight Outta Compton' casting call exemplified this hierarchy, ranking women from A to D categories, with 'D Girls' described as "African American girls. Poor, not in good shape. Medium to dark skin tone."

Media and Industry Complicity

"For castings, I was labelled 'ethnically ambiguous'… To this day, my pet peeve is when my skin tone is changed, and my freckles are airbrushed out of a photo shoot." Meghan Sussex

The mainstream fashion and media industries have long perpetuated narrow beauty ideals: white skin, blonde hair, slim noses. Disney princesses are White with flowing hair; dolls have blonde hair and blue eyes. Magazines, billboards, and films send the message that light skin is good, dark skin is bad.

Actress Lupita Nyong'o revealed she once prayed for lighter skin, learning her "night-shaded" complexion was "an obstacle to overcome." Celebrities of color are routinely photoshopped lighter in magazines. Between 2000 and 2005, only three of 81 Vogue cover models were Black—all light-skinned.

Quote from model Chanel Iman in The Times: "Designers have told me, 'We already found one Black girl. We don't need you anymore.'"

The beauty industry has been equally exclusive. British beauty columnist Funmi Fetto describes trying on makeup at a pharmacy where the darkest foundation shade left her looking like she had "white chalk" on her skin. Most beauty brands make scant efforts to address this gap, despite Black women outspending white counterparts on hair and beauty products.

Seeds of Change

Thanks largely to social media, the eurocentric beauty narrative is shifting. The Natural Hair Movement has led to a 26% reduction in hair relaxer sales over six years. When Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie moved to the US, her sister urged her to straighten her hair to "look professional." Adichie's resistance helped champion natural hair acceptance.

Significant changes are emerging:

• California outlawed hair discrimination through the CROWN Act of 2019, allowing Black women to wear dreads, braids, or cornrows to work
• UK pressure mounts to include afro hair care in hairdressing courses
• Salons specializing in natural hair care are proliferating
• Dolls now exist with natural hair and Black skin
• Unilever announced it would stop using 'normal' on products and cease digitally altering body shapes or skin color in advertising
• L'Oreal and Johnson & Johnson committed to renaming or discontinuing problematic skincare brands

In December 2019, dark-skinned, natural-haired South African Zozibini Tunzi won Miss Universe. Despite pressure to wear a wig, she refused. Upon winning, she declared: "I grew up in a world where a woman who looks like me, with my kind of hair, and my kind of skin was never considered beautiful. I think it's time that it stops today."

Beauty influencers drive change through campaigns like #melanin, #don't touch my hair, and #Blacklivesmatter. Powerful leaders like Vogue Editor Edward Enninful OBE work to normalize diversity: "For me it was very important with Vogue to normalize the marginalized, because if you don't see it, you don't think it's normal."

Fashion designers now feature models with cornrows on catwalks. Black entrepreneurs create products for Black skin tones and natural hair. British makeup artist Pat McGrath has transformed the beauty space with makeup offerings for Black women.

Models like Alek Wek, with her dark skin and shaved head, and Anok Yai, who made history as only the second Black model to open a Prada show, are changing industry standards. Yai boldly states: "Black models should not have to teach working professionals how to deal with our hair and skin day in and day out."

Redefining Beauty

Beauty isn't defined by society or the beauty industry—it must be experienced by the beholder. As philosopher Roger Scruton wrote, beauty "demands to be noticed; it speaks to us directly like the voice of an intimate friend."

Online communities now spring up where women discuss hair, skin, and everything in-between, encouraging each other to embrace their unique beauty. These positive developments must continue because no child should grow up believing they aren't beautiful due to their skin or failure to conform to arbitrary beauty standards.

The Eurocentric ideal of beauty is indeed changing, slowly but surely, as more voices demand recognition that beauty comes in all shades, textures, and forms.

About the African Perspectives Series

TheAfrican Perspective Series was launched at the 2022 Nigeria International Book Fair with the first set of commissioned papers written and presented by authors of the UN SDG Book Club African Chapter. The objective of African Perspectives is to have African authors contribute to the global conversation around development challenges afflicting the African continent and to publish these important papers on Borders Literature for all Nations, in the SDG Book Club Africa blog hosted in Stories at UN Namibia, on pan-African.net and other suitable platforms. In this way, our authors' ideas about the way forward for African development, can reach the widest possible interested audience. The African Perspectives Series is an initiative and property of Borders Literature for all Nations.