Cocoa colored, kinky haired, and thick lipped: I was never fully portrayed as beautiful. If you had the dark skin tone, your hair had to be straight. If you had the kinky hair, your skin had to be lighter, for it to be beautiful. If you had the thick lips, they were either fake or you were a white model. If you had any of these qualities alone you qualified as beautiful, but if they were all together you were runner-up. Until I was in about in 4th grade I was never fully aware of this. As I walked through the of Target, I made my way towards the beauty section, automatically taking my place amongst the other black women in our corner, the one for “Thick and Coarse Hair”. I’d never noticed that word before, “Coarse”. I asked my sister
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She had an appointment this day and I had an unexplainable this fear of being home alone. We loaded into the car and pulled up at a house. As we walked through the door, the stench of burnt hair and chemical filled our noses. I took my place on the couch in the front of the house with 3 candy dispensers next to it. I was handed my grandmother 's purse as well as 4 quarters and a remote, in hopes that candy and TV would entertain me. I got my usual Red Hots and sat on the couch, my eyes cruised the room until a magazine cover stole my gaze. The cover was amazing to me, it was different. The shiny cover contained a picture of a young women, and read “The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975”.I analyzed the caramel colored woman on the cover, with an afro the size of earth itself. Throughout all the magazines on the table she was the only one without makeup and flat thin hair, but she was still the most confident one, who also spoke a million words in one picture without even trying. I shimmied the magazine out of the cluster and stared at the cover, as if to suck up every drop of its beauty. Her pose was that of a confident lady. As I read through her article something became very clear. She was not at all ashamed of who she was, in fact, She was proud about it. She spoke as if she knew that these standards for beauty that were made for her were not allowed to define her. She made eye contact as if to confront every thought labeling her anything but beautiful and powerful and disproving them. She was a rare gem who knew who she was and would not allow anybody to label her and would not allow herself to conform. I loved it
She had an appointment this day and I had an unexplainable this fear of being home alone. We loaded into the car and pulled up at a house. As we walked through the door, the stench of burnt hair and chemical filled our noses. I took my place on the couch in the front of the house with 3 candy dispensers next to it. I was handed my grandmother 's purse as well as 4 quarters and a remote, in hopes that candy and TV would entertain me. I got my usual Red Hots and sat on the couch, my eyes cruised the room until a magazine cover stole my gaze. The cover was amazing to me, it was different. The shiny cover contained a picture of a young women, and read “The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975”.I analyzed the caramel colored woman on the cover, with an afro the size of earth itself. Throughout all the magazines on the table she was the only one without makeup and flat thin hair, but she was still the most confident one, who also spoke a million words in one picture without even trying. I shimmied the magazine out of the cluster and stared at the cover, as if to suck up every drop of its beauty. Her pose was that of a confident lady. As I read through her article something became very clear. She was not at all ashamed of who she was, in fact, She was proud about it. She spoke as if she knew that these standards for beauty that were made for her were not allowed to define her. She made eye contact as if to confront every thought labeling her anything but beautiful and powerful and disproving them. She was a rare gem who knew who she was and would not allow anybody to label her and would not allow herself to conform. I loved it