Embracing the Skin You're In, Part 2

10 Good Choices That Empower Black Women's Lives
by Grace Cornish, Ph.D.

(Page 2 of 2)

Don't Fall for the False Ideal

Fashion designers, beauty publications, and most television commercials dictate how the "ideal" woman should look: blond hair, blue eyes, white skin, pencil-thin figure, five foot seven or taller in height. The majority of women, who do not reflect these images, end up resenting themselves and wishing they looked like someone else.

This deplorable practice tells black women, "Your looks don't fit the bill — you're not good enough." While my white sisters embrace bottles of peroxide, my black sisters nurture tubes of bleaching cream. One's hair color is just an accessory, but to change one's skin color is an abomination because the chemicals in the bleaching cream actually damage and kill your natural skin cells. This is dangerous stuff, sis. Don't fall for it.

How tragically dehumanizing for another person or race to set standards for others to live by. No one has the right to criticize any of God's creations. The Creator has blessed each of us with our unique and individual features. Is man therefore greater than his Creator, to consider himself an authority on which of God's creations is ideal and which is not?

"So Close, but Yet So Far"

Another feature article in Essence, "Hollywood Shuffle: With White Men Calling the Shots, Black Women Have No Reel Power," focused on the lack of appealing roles for black women in films today. Tyra Ferrell, an actress, shared, "I was told by an agent, 'You're talented, but you're never going to work in this town. You're too black, and in this town we like the Vanessa Williams type.' For black women in Hollywood," Ferrell concluded, "that has meant being cast at the margins as either caretaker to the white characters or as a sassy bit of exotica."

Black women have come a long way, but we still have a long way to go. Recently Good Day New York aired a segment on black women's self-esteem and skin-coloring issues. The program included dialogue among various professional and educated black women from ages twenty-five to sixty. The sisters chorused that low self-image is a "hidden and real pain" that black women harbor. They discussed their individual experiences, insecurities, and concerns about "keeping silent regarding ethnic features and skin complexion issues," and the harm of pretending they don't exist. They expressed an urgent need for a self-empowerment program specifically tailored to help black women overcome and heal their battles with their self-worth.

Well, this is the program, sis. I'm here to pull back the curtain of deception and let you know that there is nothing wrong, unattractive, or ugly about being black. The only thing that's wrong and ugly is comparison. When we compare one race to another, it damages people's minds. The practice of comparing is damaging because it psychologically binds us to a false standard of beauty created by a governing body outside of our race. Many black women have become discontented and depressed, silently wishing to look more like society's ideal, and as a result, they have adopted body image and beauty standards within our very own race.

It's healing time. Let's get to the healing by facing, erasing, and replacing the false beauty ideal. It's time to stop pretending. The only way to erase this type of false programming is to acknowledge it, analyze it, and disregard it. If you have a wound on your foot and do not treat it, doesn't the affliction become widespread? If you bandage it, cover it up, because you are ashamed of people seeing it, won't the disease continue to fester until you eventually lose your foot? But if the wound is exposed and properly treated, so what if people see it? Isn't it better to see it and heal it?

Excerpted from 10 Good Choices That Empower Black Women's Lives by Dr. Grace Cornish. Excerpted by permission of Three Rivers Press, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

About the Author

Dr. Grace Cornish is a psychologist, businesswoman, and author of Radiant Women of Color and 10 Bad Choices That Ruin Black Women's Lives. She is a much-sought-after guest on the TV talk-show circuit and has appeared on numerous programs, including The Queen Latifah Show, Ricki Lake, and The Montel Williams Show.