Images that don’t let you go

I don’t  know who she is or what she’s about but needless to say: it’s all mesmerizing. First of all, I ♥  t-shirt dresses and peep toes, ergo, her whole look. Also, she’s absolutely stunning and the image & all the unknowing-ness around it is captivating on so many levels. Lenny should have written that song about her. Of course, there are some people somewhere, who won’t think she’s at all gorgeous—on principle, because she’s so dark. 

I didn’t plan to write about this but I felt the need to since I had planned to post this pic up today anyway, then I saw the link for the preview of the documentary: “Dark Girls”, pop up into my facebook stream multiple times today. It’s not at all something I presently have the psychological strength or interest to go into detail explicating on right now, but suffice it to say, I’ve touched on colourism before here and there and it’s a painful, difficult, unending unraveling, with almost no end in sight (for someone inhabiting my skin tone anyway, that’s what it oftentimes feel like on a regular basis).  Intraracism + racism make for formidable bedfellows, let me tell you. Which brings me right back around to local language and the power of language for transformative imaginings like that of: dark-skinned, black beauty.

While the Caribbean is no less a space for some of the exact same hierarchies of beauty & desire & Eurocentric ideals, the presence of “darkie” constantly reminds me of what is possible and why I am excited that it exists as a site for considering dark skin tones attractive and lauding dark skin, specifically. Unambiguously. And why I’ve written about it more than once. How often is that kind of reaffirmation happening? Why not? Language is not all there is to it but it helps. If you hear you are pretty enough all throughout your life; you just might believe it, because it hasn’t been my experience that we draw these constructs of beauty without input from others, devoid of context and not as a result of no-end of weighing in by the media or other people, whether we want their opinions or not, unfortunately. If I can celebrate and complicate these tenuous notions of beauty, all colour-struck and problematic and difficult and gnarled as they might be in some ways, I might as well do so, on, being a darkie—because I am one. And evidently, I can’t be sitting here, scratching & waiting around for anyone to do it for me.

Beautiful image originally espied on the awesome fuckyeahblackbeauty tumblr.

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Tags: beauty, black women, colorism, colourism, dark girls, free yuhself!, race, viva la black girl