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Abang Othow, South Sudanese model (image source: http://abagond.wordpress.com) |
Dark-Skin and Afros- Our worst nightmare
I’m not going to generalize this to all Africans. I’m going to speak about my nation. Inferiority complex is implanted in every Sudanese. We constantly bring ourselvesdown. We dislike ourselves. We are always trying to be something we are not. We view ourselves as inferior and others as superior. We need to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery!
The dream of the average Sudanese girl is to marry well and have a lighter skin. Lighter skin is viewed as beautiful (Sudan is not the only one in this case!). We bleach our skins, use lightening creams and use harmful skin-damaging products as long as we become “lighter”.
Read entire essay @ Dark-Skin and Afros- Our worst nightmare «
Also dig:
- "Who taught you to hate yourself?"
- The DR Congo at 50- "I would like to become white" (Dap @ Jemima)
- Why the scourge of skin lightening needs a pan-African response
- Skinny vs. Fat : An African Woman on the Politics of Feminine Beauty
- Segun Gele: Master of Nigeria's gravity-defying headgear
This isn't unique to Africans. White people in the U.S. and other primarily Caucasian countries are obsessed with tanning and bleaching or darkening their hair to extremes. It's all an obsession with being something other than your race's natural tendency. Apparently there's some kind of medium level of tan we all desperately need to reach.
ReplyDeleteEmbracing one's own natural characteristics leads to far greater beauty than such self-hating activities as tanning and skin bleaching, both incredibly bad for you. You can be gorgeous ebony or ivory, just be you.
Peace Anon, I think you raise a valid point but it is only superficially related to this post. Here's why:
ReplyDelete1.Africans were punished for hundreds of years, sometimes brutally punished based, in part, upon their physical looks.
2. African people have been near universally despised starting around the 15th century with the entrenchment of anti-black racism.
3. Further, physical looks of black/African people are, to this day, routinely denigrated in many societies around the world.
4. When a white person gets a tan the aim is to get darker but no as dark as, say, Whoopi Goldberg. That would be "too dark."
But, whatever the case, undesired paleness doesn't have nearly the same racist, oppressive baggage as undesired blackness. GI