I went to New Orleans over the summer for the Essence Music Festival, and my eyes taught me a lesson. I really didn’t have to travel far to learn this lesson, as it is very apparent in my own backyard. But maybe my eyesight had been heightened for this weekend. Maybe my attention sharpened, maybe my alertness more keen, but this lesson knocked me over my head as if I had been ignoring or avoiding it for the last 5 years of my adult life….black ain’t that beautiful.
At Essence, you had two categories of women: women with weaves and women with natural hair. I swear to you, there were even very few women with even their own “naturally relaxed” hair, meaning hair that did not have hair extensions, it was just relaxed. Everywhere I went, women had weave; long weave, bangs made of weave, Mohawks made of weave, curly weave, straight weave, wavy weave, even “I’ve been using this weave for far too long” weave.
And if you know me, or even if you don’t, by now, you know that I am not a fan of the weave. If your weave serves a purpose, OK. If you work out a lot, and you use weave to help you balance the hair sweating, OK. If you’re going out of town, and you want an easy style, OK. If it’s a special occasion, and you want a different look, OK. If you’re using it to help you transition into being natural, OK. But just as an everyday thing, where you have even forgotten what your own hair looks like, I can’t get with it. And I’ll tell you why.
It seems to me that we as a black community have really come to accept the Westernized definition of beauty. We have learned that we are not good enough. Our hair is too kinky, and straight hair or Hawaiian silky hair is what makes a woman beautiful. Our hair doesn’t grow long enough, and long hair is what makes a woman beautiful. Our noses are too big. Our skin is too dark. Everything that we encompass is too much of something, yet not enough for us.
And I’m sure there are many women out there that are saying, “whatever, I just like to wear weave. I think it looks nice.” That’s fine. I’ll take that if you’re giving it. But ask yourself a question, how do you feel about yourself without it? Does it add to you? Does it make you feel more desirable? More attractive? More confident? If it does, ask yourself why. Why is it that adding something to your physical appearance, something that is not naturally you, that quite frankly transforms you into someone else, make you feel more beautiful? What standard of beauty are we appealing to? I would contest that it isn’t a standard of beauty that we ourselves have come to define and distinguish. It’s one in which we have adopted from somewhere else, some place else, that had decided that black ain’t beautiful, and that all of these other qualities, that blacks “clearly” don’t encompass, are.
I don’t want to seem like I’m attacking weave wearers, because I think there’s a bigger issue. Loving you, loving me, loving us…..feeling like we, in our own skin, are enough.
I would venture to say, that we, blacks are beautiful. This isn’t something that I’ve always completely swallowed myself. I’ve struggled with the size of my nose, my hair, my shape, the feelings of being invisible when you’re standing next to someone that has all the “white,” I mean “right” qualities. It isn’t easy, but the black community has got to embrace who we are, and come to define our own standard of beauty.
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