"Light-skinned sisters get in free"

"Dr. Dele Olajide, a leading psychologist at King's College London, blames consumer demand on the media centering on fair skinned blacks like American pop singer Beyonce and British actress Thandie Newton. "
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BET had a "25 Shades of Fine" show on a few years back. Without a doubt, the countdown got progressively lighter, with very few if any exceptions.

I was upset not because I don't think Halley Berry or Beyonce are pretty. They are! However, I don't think they are "the prettiest black women." To me, you have a predominance of that race's features in order to encompass everything that is beautiful about that race.

Similarly, my friend from India just considers Aishwarya a beautiful person from India, but not the prettiest person of the Indian race because she has very little Indian features. If she wasn't wearing a sari and a bindi, most people would have mistaken her for being Caucasian.

Similarly, some people out of the US have told me they didn't know Halle Berry and Beyonce were black at first.

Their beauty is based on the fact that the look like so many other races. Humans are attracted to little variance. Not too this-or-that. Someone not too black, too white, too Asian, nor too Hispanic is perfect. Someone that looks like a little bit of everything is what we find attractive. That's why Halley Berry and Beyonce are praised. I get that they're beautiful, but to me they don't encompass everything that's beautiful about my race when they're mistaken for two others. :T

Oh, Vincylicious. You know that's not the ideal. She's missing the blonde hair!

Rob,

I know exactly what you're saying! As an Asian American myself, my mom's generation still holds on to the internalized racism, leftover from colonism. It is not uncommon for immigrant parents to give their daughters eye surgery as a sweet 16 birthday present! I find it disgusting as well as sad that they are forcing their children to internalize hate against themselves as a way of obtaining the "standards of beauty" as defined by the Asian popular media.

The white pop culture does the same thing to their young women. They drive girls to anorexia and bullimia with constant bombardment of the message "skinny is beautiful". It's everywhere: in TV shows, in magazines, etc...

The problem is pop culture -- of every race. Each perpetuates a cruel calculus of beauty standards that are impossible for most women to live up to. Why do they do it? It's good business for them. In keeping most of the population insecure about themselves, advertisers gorge themselves silly on the money we spend on beauty products, weight loss products, clothes, shoes, etc... Why would they want to change that?

Unless we make them. If all women of all colors refuse to buy their magazines and their products until they stop making us feel awful about ourselves, they will listen. Money is the only thing that talks in this country. Sadly. But we can use it to our advantage.

While I think the problem isn't so much white on black racism anymore these days, I think there is still a lot of internalized racism with black people amongst themselves, left over from the Jim Crow days.

For a club to promote the idea somehow that light skin is better than dark skin, even if they planned on doing the reverse the next day, is still unacceptable. It serves only to drive people apart, on an issue that has caused so much pain in the black community - skin color. I'm glad the event got canceled. It's insensitive to the max! Imagine if there was an event where Asian people got in free. Or white people. It's just stupid to divide people by skin color. People of all color should never stand for that!

Being white, I can't comment with much validity; but personally I love Denzel Washington and Don Cheadle just as much as James Earl Jones, Thandie Newton (just saw Beloved - what a performance!) or anyone else with lighter skin. They're all beautiful.
I think that the club was shot down before they had a chance to really show what they wanted to do, because zealous folks jumped on it as wrong. If they had started the other way around - "sexy chocolate" darker skinned ladies get in free - would there be such a bruhaha? I'll bet not. I think that if we're going to love who we are on the outside, we should be allowed to celebrate it, whether its light or dark skin, large or skinny, pop or goth, whatever. Can't we all just get along? ^_^

Hmmm...not sure I agree with the assertion that the media plays up crimes by whites against blacks and not the other way around. In fact, I think both are played up - the mainstream media has found that violence sells, and they flaunt it all, in my opinion. Off the top of my head, images of both John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo were shown in the press...