It seems like learning to appreciate black beauty is kind of like trying to appreciate the taste of liverwurst. No one likes it and if someone admits they have a taste for it there is a resounding ew!! In this world it is the epitome of ugliness. Asking someone to appreciate our physical selves is asking them to reject the fact that blackness is ugly. “See this grotesque thing as beautiful” is essentially what we’re saying. This brings me to my experiences as a brown-skinned girl who tans quite easily…
close but no cigar
I never really had an issue with my skin color when I was a child. Sure, I coveted the long, wavy hair of the mixed girls in my class, but I was caramel skinned. This meant that I wasn’t considered as pretty as the light -skinned girls but I could avoid the name calling that was rampant in elementary school (doo-doo stain, black as night, coal) and was light enough to, if I chose, do the name calling without someone pointing out the embarrassing fact that I was almost as dark as the “coal black” I was making fun of. My mother used barbie commercials and my favorite cartoons to teach me what was behind the light-skinned/dark-skinned obsession (something that, as I said, didn’t seem to hurt me much) and I’d reprimand my friends for saying things like “good hair” (though I’d wanted it as much as any other black girl). Succumbing to internalized racism was a grave sin in my household, and I resisted it as much as a black child could. Even when I tanned to a deep chocolate color every year (something that, to me, was evidence of a good summer), hating my skin tone didn’t come up until I was in ninth grade.
Ninth grade. I was cute. I’d always been cute. Up until now I had never looked at myself in the mirror with such distain and anger. It was early in the summer and I had already gotten my deep tan. I hadn’t even had a chance to to show myself off yet. I cried and complained to my mother that the sun had made my skin tone “uneven”. ”Are you sure that’s why you’re upset?” she asked. She knew what I was going through, but not wanting to embarrass me she suggested I put on sunscreen to “even it out.” I was embarrassed. Are you really crying because you’re too dark? How could you? What does mommy think? I was shocked that as socially conscious as I was, I fell prey to this thing that causes black people to hate themselves. I felt like the girls I had chastised all my life. Despite my dignity trying to take over, boys were more important than shame now. I spent the rest of the summer with my friend SPF 50.
Jump to 2011, California. I’m hard pressed to find a black couple anywhere. Black women are alone, black men are with non-black women. I walk past a black man and he starts looking at his cell phone or suddenly the sky becomes very interesting. I AM AVOIDED. It makes me angry, but I am more hurt. Number one, because he thinks that every black woman is so needy that they want to hop on any and every black guy they see. Number two, because his desire for whiteness is so strong that he doesn’t even want to lock eyes with me. No friendly hello. No nod. Not even a accidental glance. I DON’T EXIST. When he is with a non black woman he buries his face in hers when I walk past as if to say, “Don’t even fucking try it. I got a good thing going here so back up.”
Today, again, I am ashamed of myself. Getting annoyed when the sun seems to follow me in the car, frustrated to find that after a day of outdoor fun I have gotten two shades darker. Feeling this way about blackness makes me sad, but I no longer chastise myself. I’ve wondered why it seemed that no matter how well I dressed, how pretty my hair looked, and how well I did my makeup, my beauty was not recognized, almost like I was pretty in a dark room. The reason? Black beauty is an oxymoron. Most of the time I am an enlightened black feminist who genuinely loves black skin. However, I realize that demanding I change my mind completely and immediately about something as omnipresent as white beauty standards is asking too much of myself. I try, and I sometimes fail. Loving your physical self is hard even for a woman who was taught all her life that black women are beautiful from her beautiful, black mother. Realizing that you have to stop waiting for black men to approve of you and become the revolution yourself, even if that means being without a partner, is even harder.
and 
