Why It’s Such A Big Deal That Black Women Are Winning Beauty Pageants

Black Twitter went into a frenzy this past Sunday, as #BGM trended in celebration of Zozibini Tunzi, the newly crowned Miss Universe 2019. Zozibini Tunzi, This past Sunday’s Miss Universe beauty pageant, hosted by Steve Harvey at Tyler Perry’s Studios in Atlanta, sentWith this victory, for the first time in history, Black women hold the titles for every major beauty pageant in the U.S., including the current Miss America, Nia Franklin, the 2019 Miss USA, Cheslie Kryst, this year’s Miss Teen USA, Kaliegh Garris, and now Miss Universe. However, these women are not the first Black women to hold their respective titles, so why is this victory provoking such pride in Black women around the world? Well, to be frank, this signals that for the first time in American history, Blackness has unanimously met America’s standard of beauty. Granted, we don’t know what this may mean for everyday race relations, but it will definitely help to inspire confidence in Black girls worldwide. Ultimately, these pageant winners may help to redefine standards of beauty around the world. This fact is one which Zoxibini was keenly aware, as evidenced by her answer to the final set of questions,

“I grew up in a world where a woman who looks like me – with my kind of skin and my kind of hair – was never considered to be beautiful,” she said in her last response. “I think it is time that that stops today. I want children to look at me and see my face and I want them to see their faces reflected in mine.”

Zozibini, South African model and public relations professional, should be considered beautiful by any standard, but her dark brown skin and short tapered fade have only recently come (back) into fashion. This may come as somewhat of a shocker given the imagery and symbolism of the Black Power Movement of the 1960’s and 70’s, where natural hair and dark skin were elevated to high esteem. Unfortunately, the stealthy overthrow of the Black Panther Party (by the U.S. government) took pride in the Black phenotype and aesthetic down with it. However, fortunately there has been a not-so-subtle resurgence in Black Pride recently. In the past 6 years, social media has been the major vehicle propelling the #Blackgirlmagic movement, which has at it’s core the goal of empowering and uplifting Black girls and women. In many ways, hashtags like #Blackgirlmagic and #Blackboyjoy are the contemporary descendants of the rallying cry “Say it Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud” that became synonymous with the Black Power Movement. In an interview earlier this year, the creator of the Black Girl Magic movement, CaShawn Thompson, stated,

“I was the first person to use it and reference Black girl empowerment. Other times it was used before, it was always something about Black girl’s and Black women’s hair. I was the first person to use Black Girl Magic or Black Girls Are Magic in the realm of uplifting Black women. Not so much about our aesthetic but just who we are.”

While celebrating Black women’s aesthetic was not necessarily the movement’s central focus initially, the hashtag became subsumed within the natural hair movement that took over platforms like Youtube and Instagram around the same time. Together, these movements had the following overarching goal: popularizing, normalizing, and empowering Black women’s lived experience through online communal bonding. That this was necessary in the first place shows how far we had fallen. The popularity of the million times viral Malcolm X quote (1962), “The most disrespected person in America is the Black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the Black woman. The most neglected person in America is the Black woman” is evidence that even if no one else thinks so, Black women’s struggle for consideration, love, and care is legitimate and long-standing. Although Black men today may not be shouting it as loudly as Malcolm X once did, the fact still rings true.

For centuries Black women have contested with Eurocentric beauty standards. Prerequisites for beauty in cultures around the world include features like pale skin, long straight hair, and a slender nose. Women who possess these qualities are generally considered more beautiful than those who do not. As such, stereotypical non-Western features are routinely denigrated and de-valued. Black women, though phenotypically diverse, have been considered the antithesis of conventional beauty standards. Perhaps some individuals may be compelled to ask why this is such a big deal, “Who cares whether or not strangers find you beautiful?” Right? Wrong! These beauty standards have consequences beyond how they make Black women, and other women of color, feel (But I do want to encourage us to be more considerate of feelings, and to allow feelings to hold more weight and power than they presently do). The mass media industry probably has the most significant impact on shaping our ideas about beauty, even if just subconsciously. After all, America is the consumer capital of the world, and advertisements are a fundamental feature of most of our daily lives. These advertisements help to define and reinforce notions of what beauty is, and who does and does not qualify. This is important. These beauty standards are undoubtedly at least partly responsible for Black women’s partnering and marital experiences. Black women make up the largest group of singles in the country. Black women are also less likely to ever marry than any other group in the U.S., and are the least preferred group in online dating. Facts such as these are often not included in these debates about the importance of representation and beauty standards, but I argue that they should be. We are are social creatures, and are, unfortunately, susceptible to external influences. Our perceptions of, and preferences for, beauty are not our own.

The dominance of Eurocentric beauty standards is further reinforced by institutional structures that require that students and employees present themselves in ways that align with these standards. For example, it was only in July of this year that California became the first state to ban workplace and school discrimination against Black people for wearing natural hairstyles, including locks, braids, and afros. Technically, race-based discrimination has been illegal for several decades, but this recent ban provides evidence that laws are not air-tight. Black hair-styles, which simply serve as a proxy (or stand-in) for Black people in general, clearly fell through the legal cracks. Thus, discriminating against “Black hairstyles,” by claiming that they are unkept or unprofessional, is nothing more than an underhanded strategy for discriminating (or excluding) Black people generally. By masking the underlying intent, these gaps in our legal system allow for the reproduction of racism. Institutions are given space to claim that it is not Blackness itself, but Black hairstyles that are not welcome. How can the individuals enforcing these institutional policies fail to see that rejecting an otherwise eligible Black candidate because of the way that their hair naturally grows from their scalp is rooted in racist beauty ideology?

Perhaps, irrespective of whether the hair is “natural” or otherwise, Black men and women should be free to wear their hair in whatever way they see fit. Obviously, there are workplace standards, but policies should be race-neutral. Policies against locks and braids absolutely do not meet the standard of race neutrality, as these hairstyles are historically Black. The policing of Blackness is as old as this very country, and does not seem to be dissipating any time soon. While Miss Universe’s natural fade was accepted on ABC this past Sunday, NBC is far less progressive in this regard. Gabrielle Union was reportedly fired as a judge from NBC’s “America’s Got Talent” soon after reporting toxic, sexist, and racist behavior during production. Among other incidents, Union reported that she had been prohibited from wearing certain hairstyles that the networked had deemed “too black.” Apparently production believed that these hairstyles were unlikely to be palatable to their core viewership. While Union has received support from fans and peers, the gravity of this situation has been severely understated. The underlying issue is not the inability to wear one’s hair as one desires, but rather the infantilization of Black people in general, and Black women in particular. It is but another example of how Black women are precluded from enjoying the rights of full-citizenship, and are reduced to the value of their external features. Why Black women are criticized for the very creative expression that non-Black women are praised for commandeering is a question that most Black women have likely wrestled with. It is so disappointing to once again arrive at the answer, “racism,” and have no solution.

Unfortunately, people of color, and Black people in particular, may be as implicated in the persistence of these Eurocentric beauty standards as the institutional gate keepers enforcing them. As much as we would like to believe otherwise, all we have to do is look to popular culture and trends in consumerism to support this claim. Black popular culture is inundated with homogenous depictions of racially ambiguous (or “exotic,” as the rappers like to say) Black women, adorned with loose curls and fair skin complexion. Yes, these are Black women, but they are not representative of all Black women. Granted, I am not privy to what goes on in the backstage, and I do not doubt that some Black talent, e.g. singers, rappers, actors, etc., have advocated for more diversity in Black women’s representation, but the changes have been slow to come nonetheless. The exaltation of fair skin is an issue plaguing other communities of color as well. The plight of Afro-Latinas has also been well-documented. Latinas with dark skin are routinely excluded from representation in Latino media. Singer Amara La Negra was extremely vocal last year about the prevalence of colorism within the Latino community. Unfortunately, her critiques were not well received by Latino media. Communities of color do not take kindly to criticism, whether internal or external, but we cannot deny our occasional tendency to participate in our own suffering. Our indoctrination into Western beauty culture is reflect in the consistent popularity of skin lightening. In fact, the global skin lightening products market is a multi-million dollar industry, and its primary markets are in Asia and Africa. Like Zozibini stated, the condemnation of the Black aesthetic is a global crisis, not just an American one, but why wouldn’t it be? European imperialism and colonialism (or the process employed by Europeans to to take over the world) was a global experience, through which European values were spread to virtually every country. What we are seeing today is the symbolic violence left in the wake of physical violence.

In sum, I will say it here, though it has already been stated countless times elsewhere, Black women are not a monolith, and any platform that fails to capture the diversity in our beauty commits a grave injustice to our humanity, only further reifying our status as second-class citizens.