The Beholden Eye

People Magazine publishes a most beautiful people issue annually.  The usual suspects are there – Pamela Anderson, Denzel Washington, Angelina Jolie and the usual two Black women, Halle Berry and Beyonce Knowles.

Black women have entered every major area in American society.  They have become well-known doctors, lawyers, athletes, actors, astronauts and even captains of industry.  Yet Black women have yet to break into what would seemingly be the easiest glass ceiling in the world to break – the most beautiful list.  How is it in the land that has given birth to such beautiful Black women as Dorothy Dandridge, Kerry Washington, Angela Bassett, Gloria Foster, Diahann Carroll, Beverly Johnson and Lena Horne, list only two Black women? 

Greta Garbo, Carole Lombard, Betty Grable, Jane Mansfield, Marilyn Monroe, Twiggy, Pamela Anderson – they’re all blond bombshells.  And throughout the history of beauty in the United States, being White and blonde assured a woman of her.  But what of the women of color, those women who could certainly change their hair color but not the color of their skin?  Who considered them beautiful?  And what of the damage done to the psyche of women who look but never see themselves on the beautiful list?  What happens to them?

For years the images of Black women (and Black people) was almost nonexistent in popular media.  Eventually filmmakers like Oscar Micheax began to make race films that were made for Black audiences.  In mainstream film, Black women were usually portrayed as mammies, those large, wise Black women beholden to their white masters or employers.  The only other roles for Black women, especially pretty Black women, was that of the tragic mulatto.  For years, beautiful Black women found themselves in the same old role.  It was because Hollywood had no use for beautiful Black women.  When Black women were not relegated to playing mulattoes, they were usually given a scene to shine as a singer like Lena Horne did in a number of films.  Then Dorothy Dandridge arrived on the scene.  Dandridge was a rare talent.  She could sing, dance, act and she was lovely.  Cast in two mainstream Hollywood movies -Porgy and Bess and Carmen Jones - Dandridge laid to rest the image of the Black woman as simply window dressing in a movie.  So talented was she that the Academy of Movie Picture Arts and Sciences nominated her for a Best Actress Award for the riveting portrayal of Carmen Jones.  Unfortunately she died before showing the world all her God given talent.

If the image of Black women in the cinema was given short shrift, the world of print media was non-existent.  The popular magazines of the first half of the 20^th century like Look, Life, Time, Newsweek, Photoplay always found ways to glorify the beauty of White women and the debonair looks of White men.  But Black people were once again relegated to the background although there was no lack of beauty within the Black community at that time.  Yet it was not until the late 1950’s that Hollywood and New York began to notice the smoldering good looks of Eartha Kitt and Diahann Carroll along with handsome leading men like Sidney Portier and Harry Belafonte.  It took good looks along with undeniable talent that made Hollywood start to open its mind to the fact that Black people were beautiful in their own right. 

Still it wasn’t until 1974 that Beverly Johnson paved the way by becoming the first Black woman to appear on the cover of Vogue Magazine.  Johnson and Naomi Sims gave Black women and Black girls the image that had been missing for two hundred years.

Since the 1970’s Black women have graced the pages of magazines internationally and walked the catwalks in New York and London.  Black women as diverse as Oprah Winfrey and Tyra Banks are invited into homes all across America.  Kerry Washington, Angela Bassett, Halle Berry and Monique have all made films that millions of dollars for their studios.  Yet, the United States can only agree that two and only two Black women are good enough to be included in their Most Beautiful List.  After more than 100 years in the public eye, the damage to young Black girls is still being done.

These messages, unfortunately, are not only reinforced by popular culture but also by public institutions.  Recently, an inner-city high school was found to be constructing practices that supported racial hierarchy utilizing dance classes.  

It would seem that in this particular area, Black women are taking a huge leap backwards.  In the past, even without the great number of beautiful women of color commonly seen, that women of color and particularly Black women, had a great deal of self confidence.  Women in the Black community were acknowledged no matter their size, definitive African features and myriad shades.  This view of Black beauty was evident and the real arbiters of beauty in the community, Black men, seemingly agreed.  Both Black and Latino men have always been more receptive to larger body types and ethnic features as opposed to their White counterparts.  Thus the image of beauty, regardless of what popular culture deemed worthy, was not an image originally shared by communities of color.

The impossible standards set by the media and the fashion industries have not only been detrimental to women of color but Caucasian women as well.  The harm crosses racial lines and age barriers also.  As the image of beauty has changed, so have the methods of achieving said beauty.  The diet industry has grown exponentially with the rise of the thin, White ideal.  For those girls and women for whom dieting is not enough, starvation or eating disorders have become the norm.  It had always been presumed that such methods were solely the province of young, Caucasian women.  However studies have shown that these extremely harmful methods of reaching and maintaining those impossible standards have crossed the lines of both color and age. 

Black and Latino women and girls are not the only ones being affected by this notion of beauty and Whiteness.  In a recent survey conducted by the Mariko Morimoto of the University of Georgia and Susan Chang, it was discovered that White women were featured primarily in ads for beauty while models of other races and ethnicities were featured in ads for cars, health aids and travel.  This was found to be the case for both Japanese and other global publications.  This global phenomenon has become so prevalent in the Asian world that the most requested plastic surgery is the rounding of the eyes.  In this age of globalization, racism in the form of the western world notion of beauty, confirms its ugliness once again.

It may be asked if this trend will ever cease.  It may be asked if the world will once again recognize beauty in all its incarnations and cease to accept the Western world’s notion of beauty.  It may be asked if this notion of beauty is really important in light of the societal ills facing the world.  The answers are surely as varied as the number of people asking the questions.  Yet one fact remains.  There will always be a place in the world for beauty.  It is beauty that is valued and treasured in art, literature, music and nature.  It is beauty that is remembered when people speak of the world.  The notion of beauty is a subjective thing.  But beauty, in its many forms, is alive and well and residing amongst us all.