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Lensman: Gabriela Hasbun, Pilus and makeup styling: Whittany Robinson, Models: Deshon Andrews and Natalie Hayeems, Designer: Lauren Park

My understanding of beautiful, ugly, bonny, and other artful-related adjectives used to be extremely warped. Growing upwards, I begged to terminate getting boxed braids considering they were too "different," compared to what the Nicoles and Ashleys of my course had.

I took family members' advice of fugitive the sun — god forbid I get any darker. I routinely pinched my nose span and lips in a misguided attempt to shrink them. All of these actions were my ways of trying to assimilate into western dazzler standards, what it looked like to be socially acceptable.

However, my thought of beauty inverse in my early teens when I happened upon a Facebook comment from Hari Ziyad who said, "Blackness people do not have the power to exist ugly."

I'd never heard of an thought like this before and did more than meditating on the concept of beauty and how it relates to Black people. As I understood the idea more — that in that location is no such matter equally an ugly Black person — I felt empowered enough to embrace my own personal manner.

To seek out my ain beauty routine, one that didn't involve being obsessed with becoming "whiter."

If you take 1 in mind, what you're really revealing is a colonized version of what beauty ways. In a globe where dazzler ethics adhere strictly to western standards of fair, thin, cis-het, and white people.

Black people, most of the time, will be thought of as "unattractive" because they are further from white ideals. This isn't about personal physical, emotional, or sexual attraction, but the broader power structures that affect interpersonal relationships and social interactions.

Black people, specially dark-skinned, Black women, are often relegated as unattractive without any interrogation of where that conventionalities comes from. We are automatically assigned a identify of physical inferiority without any hesitation. And the consequences of that are everywhere…

Serena Williams is continually masculinized because of her bulkier torso blazon and is oft compared as less svelte than her white counterparts, like Caroline Wozniacki. Leslie Jones, who suffered heinous harassment on social media, was called "ugly" and a "gorilla" by online trolls.

Fifty-fifty Black children are non shielded from this criticism — Blue Ivy, who has a more pronounced olfactory organ, has been taunted considering of her looks.

Another reason gild deems Black people "ugly"? Because our features are criminalized.

Media continually portrays Black people as the embodiment of ugly, muddy, and criminal. Even as crimes such as homicide are committed widely beyond all races, media continues to overrepresent crimes from Black and Brown people.

Even in fiction, representation of Blackness people has generally been depicted as criminals, affecting how we are seen from a immature age. Black people ever take to reactively challenge the narrative of beingness divers as unlawful.

Prescribing black people equally "unattractive" has consequences beyond proper name-calling.

In non-European countries, the desire for fairer skin, a colonial import, is a health trouble. In Nigeria, 77 pct of women utilise skin bleaching products to lighten their peel, and 59 percent of women in Togo utilise skin-lightening products.

These products are widely available despite attempts at regime intervention. Fifty-fifty as these skin-lightening products make cancer more than likely and having other health consequences, governments take issues keeping them from consumers.

Abroad, colorism is often targeted at African immigrants and Black tourists. In countries such as Italy and England, Blackness people routinely report being called "ugly" by strangers or being kept out of clubs and other establishments for beingness "too dark."

In the United States, Black girls continuously struggle with their self-esteem as a product of being devalued in society.

In high school, I felt humiliated at my appearance, at my inability to suit. I used wearing apparel as a mode to hide my body and correct it. I wore large baggy shirts that enveloped my effigy. I refused to accept off my winter coat throughout the school day because I was embarrassed near how I looked and thought I was too ugly to have a style.

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Now, in accordance with this new philosophy, I dress and nowadays myself in line with how I want to express myself. I vesture brighter colors — reds, yellows, whites, you name information technology — because I pass up to hibernate in demure shades if I am feeling bold.

I vesture my hair the fashion I want to, whether that be nappy, in braids, in bantu knots, or straight; I pass up to let a fear of divergence dictate how I style it.

I don't apply makeup every bit a tool to hide or shrink features like my nose, or body parts that I accept been taught to hate. Instead, I embrace the lyricism of it, an opportunity to play with the gift that is my face.

I empathize Black as beautiful. I fully encompass Black as alluring, even when other people, popular culture, and the globe tell me otherwise.

Black isn't cute in spite of whiteness. Blackness isn't cute because white people discover Blackness attractive (or fetishize information technology and pass that off as "attraction"). Black is beautiful without beingness compared to any standards, without the reassurance of corporations or anyone else, for that thing.

Black people can't exist ugly because whiteness shouldn't get to define the metrics for what dazzler ways.

Whiteness has created and reinforced standards of dazzler that only celebrate those with non-Blackness features; it has ruined the pregnant of "dazzler" and turned it into a racist term to shame difference.

The only style to have a developed agreement of "beautiful" and other terms of aesthetic is to broaden our understanding and disconnect "dazzler" from white standards.

I refuse to hide. I choose to celebrate what I take been endowed with in the manner that I choose. The world may agree on to their bias and ascertain "attractiveness" and "beauty" as white, but equally I reject these standards, I am refusing to participate and creating new rules.

Gloria Oladipo is a Black, woman, freelance writer who discusses all things race, mental health, gender, and more! Check out her thoughts on Twitter or Contently .