Danielle Belton at The Black Snob has written a beautiful, truthful article: “On Little Black Girls, Beauty and Barbie Dolls”:
Along time ago at a kitchen table in an all-black, middle/working class neighborhood in St. Louis, Mo.’s North County a young Danielle Belton, age five, loved to draw and color more than anything in the world. My older sister, aka “Big Sis, bka Denise, didn’t like to color, so I inherited all the coloring books she never used.
I could draw for hours and color for hours, but all I drew and colored were white people.
I would take out my Barbie coloring book and select the yellow crayon for her hair, the blue crayon for her eyes and the pink “flesh” colored crayon for her skin. I would make her “beautiful” in what my little noggin thought was beauty.
What’s funny is my parents, like many black parents, were trying their hardest to make sure myself and my sister had positive images of other black women and ourselves. My mother constantly fought with the toy store owners about getting in more black dolls because she wanted to buy me Barbies, but worried about how having a gaggle of blonde Malibu and ballerina Barbies could effect my young mind. She immersed us in our culture. She told us we were beautiful all the time.
Yet I still drew and colored nothing but white people. Read more…
This resonates with me now in particular, because I just found a book I made as a fifth-grade project and realized that all the characters were white. Even in my senior year of high school, I wrote another story about a girl who was almost exactly like me in her interests, abilities, and college goals—except she was white (or at least I thought of her that way). Like Danielle, I also always colored people with the “flesh”, light crayon.
It is so seriously messed up that children of color see themselves so unreflected in the literature and popular media that they can’t even represent themselves when THEY’RE the artists.
I used to draw myself and my family as white with blue eyes and blonde hair (we’re Asian). My teacher called my parents in for a conference where they confronted me and told me that it wasn’t an accurate portrayal of my family… I wish they had chosen to show me positive images of non-white beauty instead.
I still struggle with hating my eyes, and part of me fears marrying my white boyfriend; I’m afraid my children will choose to reject their Asian side because it seems like I don’t value my Asian-ness or my status as a minority. I am afraid that it will be easier for them to deny their non-white racial heritage and identify with their white half (whether consciously or unconsciously).
Am I simply worrying too much? Are my attitudes about this racist?
Even for white women with dark curly hair like me, Barbie dolls were frustratingly unattainable in their beauty because of the long blond hair and it’s almost alchemical effect on society. Brunette barbies were hard to find when I was little and forget one with curly or even wavy hair much less olive skin like I have. However I did , as a child realize that TV was much more of a bad influence on my psyche and never came to reset Barbie dolls. I eventually collected Hispanic Barbie and Super Star Cara (a black barbie version of the famous blond issue). I own Ghanaian Barbie, Nigerian, Brazilian, Peruvian, Chilean, Moroccan, Thai and Italian. I gave away Kenyan (the only barbie doll with flocked hair) to my friend who has Kenyan roots for her daughter. I honestly don’t think Barbie is the problem when it comes to beauty perceptions embeded into a little girl’s mind , fairy tale books and Disney are probably the worst.
SuperAmanda…I agree, but this is a problem that girls of color deal with on a deeper level.
You are white with dark curly hair…if you wanted to fit the beauty ideal, you could straighten your hair and put some bleach/ Clairol in it to achieve that shiny blond “golden girl” look.
There is still that saying: “Blondes have more fun”. This reinforces the notion that white women are the most beautiful. It excludes not only brunettes and redheads, but women of color, most of whom have dark hair.
The only difference is that a brunette white woman can become fair-haired if she wants to. She is still white, but considered “prettier” than before by virtue of lighter hair.
However, young girls who are not white often grow up believing that they will never be pretty…simply because they are black or Asian or Hispanic or multiracial.
I’m biracial. I played with both white and black dolls as a kid. As a little girl, I coveted the beauty of white girls and the power it had over other people. That feeling never quite disappeared. Now, at 26 years old, I’m trying to confront the status quo.
By chance, have you read “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison? I believe that Renee wrote an article about how destructive the white beauty ideal is to women of color.
It is one of my favorite books because it deals with this painful subject in a very honest way. I see myself in Pecola Breedlove, the little girl who wants blonde hair and blue eyes because she believes that only then will she be loved.