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Why Rihanna’s New Beauty Line Matters
And so do Black girls
Rihanna has a new line coming out in the fall — Fenty Beauty and from the teasers — there is every reason to be gratified.
Watching the ad with gorgeous girls mixing through the collage with carefree artistry — it was hard not to be affected. I shared my initial reaction — and as the day progressed — it was clear that my words resonated.
As long as I can remember — there has been a consistent erasure of dark-skinned women from the globally-certified aesthetic that still propels a certain kind of delicacy as superior and more viable.
I didn’t escape the effects of colorism while growing up in Lagos — Nigeria in the eighties and early nineties. There was always the pride in our heritage and the stubbornness to not allow the resounding effects of our former colonial masters — to completely dilute the primal structures of what makes an Igbo girl different from a girl of Yoruba descent.
But somehow — in the midst of restoring the glory that predated the avalanche of ships — carrying the Union Jack with predatory instincts that were masked under the guise of missionaries and the work of the Lord — we managed to succumb to the viral disease of self-mutilation.
Mentally screwed from the dire effects of being whipped beyond collapse for the awful sin of sporting the hue of darkness and evil. Whiteness is angelic and sinless. The Jesus we were forced to serve looks like a golden-haired fairy with blue eyes and a smile that is meant to torture you back to the holy side.
Slavery didn’t only strip us of basic human dignity and the ability to function as we were without reminders of the short-comings that were preached into guilt for — but the period of enslavement also wrecked havoc on the psyche of our mere existence and turned our beauty into an ugly history of shame that stuck to us like glue.
You can’t scrub off the deep-meaning reasons why people of color bought the hoax about why dark skin is…
