Dark Skin Vs Light Skin in the Black Culture
In today’s society, the media and other sources of influence have convinced the majority black people to believe light skinned women should be more accepted than dark skinned females.
Our pop culture have drilled in our minds that light skinned women are a form of popular beauty. Take a look at the barbie aisle in your nearest Toy R US, how many light skinned barbies do you see?
Musical pop culture has played a dominate role in brain-washing our black females to feel insecure about their skin colour either dark or light skin. If we turn on BET 106 & Dumb, most video vixens are light skin (shaking ass, acting naughty) . Dark skinned women generally play the role as educated newscaster or women activist. Turn on CNN, BET NEWS or any talk show to see this come to play.
As you realize, our pop culture and black society have allowed our women to be stereotyped into categories of beauty. Light skinned female tends to be the woman of adventure and exotica and our dark skinned females are intelligent “wifey material/home girls”.
Our stereotypical views have hurt our black women in feeling insecure and self-conscious about themselves. Thus, weave, extensions, and bleach come into play in our society. Micheal Jackson is a perfect example! He felt the need to bleach his skin because of his discolouration and to boost his career further in the music industry (it worked).
The battle between dark and light skinned black females will never die, therefore, there really isn’t any true conclusion. But maybe its not a battle between the females but a battle within themselves fighting against pop culture up-bringing.
Insecurity can turn into insanity quickly. We can never abolish stereotypes in popular culture, however, we can minimize the effect on our black females by educating and discussing these views openly.
I’ve placed a video which briefly touches on this subject. This 7-minute video was developed and arranged by a 17-year old woman. She believes this is an important discussion for our black people to understand.
Click on video below.
Wow! This was a great video! So real and so true. I identified with those beautiful younng sistahs. These are things that are being ignored, avoided, and swept under the table, good job for forcing it out into the light. I’m including this video into my research papert this semester. I look forward to more enlightening works!! Kepe it up!