The Color of Beauty

A few of my friends have had to endure rants and ramblings about the intersection of race and perceptions of beauty and I'm sure they think I'm crazy. But every so often a study or report comes out about black girls and their perceptions of themselves and how society perceives them. I am always saddened by the results.

Nearly 70 years ago sociologists Mamie and Kenneth Clark did an experiment to determine how black children perceived themselves by using white and black dolls and asking them questions about which ones they thought were "nice" and which ones they'd rather play with. Those children are senior citizens now and grew up in an anti-black segregated society. Overwhelmingly, the children identified the white doll as the nice one and said they preferred to play with the white doll.

Every few years someone has tried to replicate this study but this week Good Morning America added a new question. They asked 19 black elementary students which doll was prettier. Nearly half of the girls identified the white doll as prettier, despite the fact that the dolls are identical except for color. The black boys said both dolls were pretty or said the black doll was prettiest.

I'm not really surprised by the results, just saddened. As a black female I am very aware of the mainstream perceptions of beauty and how they can be harmful to the self-esteem of black girls and women. Black women face all the same self-confidence issues that white women do but also face issues about skin shade and hair texture. Imagine this, the first time I went to purchase makeup in a pharmacy, the darkest shade of foundation was still too light for me. Also consider the images black girls and teenagers are bombarded with in magazines...White girls/women are always featured prominently and black girls/women are rarely featured at all and when they are featured on the cover of a women's magazine they are typically light in complexion with long relaxed hair and "European features."

While this experiment is not exactly empirical data, it is an indication that something is wrong with the ways black little girls see themselves. It is clear, the girls interviewed by Good Morning America associate whiteness with beauty. So I think it's important for us to ask why. And to have a dialogue about modern perceptions of beauty that is race-sensitive.