One Sister's Love of Beauty

by Vanessa May

From Skin Deep: Women Writing on Color, Culture, and Identity, edited by Elena Featherston (Crossing Press, 1994)

Personally, I ill fit into this society and I am very glad that is so. This is a society on a collision course with itself. And as the spread of these societal values moves across the globe in the name of a "New World" order, we place ourselves on the brink of destruction. ----V. May

Beautiful smiles on beautiful faces, each one's roots from different places, but all finding asylum on the lunch benches of Brainard Avenue's elementary school.

Beautiful, wondrous world sisters whose cultures spanned the globe.

Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. Susan Rico. Mindy Nakamura. Barbara Rivers. Tracy Sketerman. Lisa Belson. Vanessa May.

Sisters of Gaea, daughters of Eve, all finding a common ground on which to stand and to communicate. Enjoying each other's company and appreciating our differences.

That is, until the fifth grade, when the joys of childhood became the pangs of prepubescence. One's racial, cultural, sexual and social identities were questioned. Are you Black? Are you trying to be white? Are you fruity? Are you cool? Are you? What are you?

It was during this time that societal constructs laid siege to free hearts, minds and souls. White girls do not hang out with Black girls unless they want to be Black. Asian girls don't hang out with Mexicans unless they wanna be Mexican. Girls must like boys unless they are weird, and you must have certain clothes to define you and the group to which you belong. Conform or rebel. Something that all preteens and teens do, to a greater or lesser degree.

Our society sets into motion divide-and-conquer tactics that rip at the very essence of our being. To question societal constructs is to live a life of one's own making, and how many of us can create for ourselves a mode of behavior that will allow for existence in a society that by design systematically destroys deviance?

Moreover, people are taught that in order to be truly socialized, one must act in a manner that doesn't deviate far from Puritanical European roots. Prosperous roots that built one of the mightiest nations the world has ever known. A nation whose reputation is based on exported lies and untruths. A nation that holds all other nations captive. Nations, striving to be like her, engage in a process that is destroying the world.

How?

First: indoctrinate people with the inane idea that white is powerful. It appears to be so. Modern history shows us white world domination. The subjugation of people of color worldwide gives an appearance of power--not the reality of paranoid humanoid whose fear of extinction causes it to destroy all that seems to threaten it.

Second: indoctrinate people with the insane idea that the way in which they have lived for thousands of years is wrong, "primitive." Compare a grass hut to a skyscraper. Compare hunting and gathering food every day with going to the refrigerator or McDonald's. Don't discuss the reality of ecologically unsound structures that recycle stale air, spread disease, and create waste in such amounts that we can't dispose of it. Ignore the reality that hunting and gathering places in perspective--the value of life and death, need and want, animals, plants, and humans and our interdependence.

In conclusion: create a zero-sum social construct that teaches superiority based on innate inferiority and teach all people to aspire to it.

In their aspiration they continually lose but appear to gain. The model appears to continually gain power, wealth, position, and value; all the while it wreaks havoc in order ot keep up appearances. In reality we all lose.

Societal constructs lay siege to young, impressionable minds, hearts, and souls. Taught not to appreciate our distinct and unique cultures, we are taught instead to treat them with mistrust and suspicion. Sell out. Renounce your family's ways, adopt a prepackaged societal identity. You must fit into one of them but it cannot, it must not, be based on your own culture or on an eclectic multicultural view. It must be based on white supremacy, based of the idea that you and other people of color are inferior. Not just your looks, but your actions. You cannot be civil toward each other because in your quest to be like white, you must all fight for its favor.

Can we cease to care about how we are seen in the eyes of our lighter kin? Can we see ourselves with our own eyes? Can we find the beauty in ourselves? Can we see with wisdom, the eternal wisdom each young child has that assures us that we are all one? A wisdom that lets the soul see, the heart act, and the mind think.

I love beauty. Beauty to me comes in all shades, shapes, and sizes. I must see life this way. I can also see ugliness. It too comes in all shades, shapes, and sizes. What differentiates beauty from what is ugly is behavior. Western society directs people to see beauty with only one vision. (Note the Miss Universe Pageant: The majority of the world's people are people of color, yet the majority of the contestants of the pageant are white-skinned.)

I let my mind open and the ideas came forth. I cannot help my love of beauty. I cannot quell my love of life. I cannot be blinded, nor let others define my visions. I know what I see.

Sisterfriends, you are all very beautiful! Now, I know I've never seen you, but Beauty can be felt as well as seen; and I feel your beauty.

My definition of beauty is not based on any European standard or any European mind-set. If it were, I would hate myself, and probably hate or envy you. I've come to understand that beauty truly is in the eye and soul of the beholder. Understanding this has made me an extremely happy woman. I take sheer delight in appreciating my fellow human beings and in appreciating all that this world and life has to offer.

Women of color, particularly African American women, have been debased and devalued based on their hue. For "some strange reason," the lighter hued and more European the woman looks, the more beautiful she is viewed as being. In essence, beauty standards are deeply rooted in racism and colorism.

I know I'm not telling you anything you weren't aware of when you woke up this morning. Right? The thing is, how many of you buy into this western European standard? I mean, don't believe the hype, don't subscribe to the stereotype. 'Cuz every time you do, you are helping to perpetuate the myth of white supremacy, and this argues against the genetic annihilation of whites. Strong words, huh? Well, as Malcolm X said, "Too black, too strong."

Personal experience has taught me to hold my darker-hued sister in great regard. She has endured a lot. I've heard brothers and sisters talk about a person being too dark, having too big a nose, too-nappy hair, or too-large lips. Every time I hear this, I cringe. It is obvious to me that such utterances are outright condemnations of all African physical traits, particular sub-Saharan African traits. Traits that most African-Americans can trace in their ancestry. Come on, how can the physical characteristics of the original people be ugly!

Unfortunately, from the cradle to the grave, we are bombarded with the lie that "white is right." This mind-set originated in Europe and has been barbarously spread across the globe. It started during the age of exploration and did the most damage during the years of slavery, imperialism, and colonialism.

These actions led to the physical and mental subjugation of people of color worldwide. This subjugation was not based and is not based on one group's superiority or inferiority, but on one group's quest for self-preservation. It is a defense mechanism used to ensure the perpetuation of genetically recessive traits.

The real trip is that the biggest threat to this world order is the African. This is why Africans are the most oppressed people. Basically, the darker and more physically African, the greater the threat. Just think, if the world's people were to come together in peace and love, then what would we be made of? What would we look like?

You dig?

It seems to me that the young African Americans of today define "blackness" in a very superficial way: by one's clothes, one's musical tastes, and ofcourse, by one's skin color. But this all must go if we as a people are ever to love and respect ourselves. I have seen the sorrow in the face of a beautiful ebony woman who realizes that the reason her butterscotch friend is getting hawked by the men is because she's light. I have seen the anguish in the mixed kid who, try as she might, can never succeed at being black enough to be black or white enough to be white. I have seen the names "tar baby," "liver lips," "nap head," "high yellow nigga," and "blackassed, nappy headed bitch" elicit rivers of tears. Honestly, I have seen enough.

Vanessa May is a twenty-three-year-old African American Lover of Life, and a student of law at Howard University.