[Note: Forgive your tired, over-burdened editors. Okay, actually one editor--me--for re-posting the article about #blackparentquotes, which had already appeared here back in September. You can still participate in discussion on that thread. Here is a replacement post.]
written by Love Isn’t Enough co-editor Tami Winfrey Harris; originally published at What Tami Said
“Adults, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers, window sign – all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every girl child treasured. ‘Here,’ they said, ‘this is beautiful, and if you are on this day “worthy” you may have it.’” - Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye
Is achieving idealized beauty worth a laser to the eye? For some, the answer is yes, based on comments to articles about an LA doctor’s new procedure that turns brown eyes blue:
LAGUNA BEACH, Calif. (KTLA) — If you’ve always wanted blue eyes, but have brown instead, there might be something you can do to change that.
A doctor in Laguna Beach called Stroma Medical says it can use laser technology to change brown eyes to blue — permanently — without damaging vision.
Dr. Gregg Homer has been working on the technology for 10 years. Read more…
When it comes to body image, we live in “don’t like it, then change it” times. Suffering from thin hair, laugh lines or a flat ass? That’s nothing hair extensions, Botox and booty surgery cannot “fix.” But in the age of the dramatic makeover, we shouldn’t stop analyzing why certain looks have more social currency than others.
I’ve always found genuflecting to light-colored eyes particularly icky. It stinks of concession to Aryan supremacy. If brown eyes are boring, ugly and inferior and blue eyes dazzling and beautiful, does that mean that all groups of people for whom blue or green or gray eyes are extremely rare are physically boring, ugly and inferior? And is it a coincidence that many people of color fall into the “less desirable” category of brown-eyed and brown-haired?
While I’m ranting, I should add how much I hate it when members of the dominant culture assume that I desire the same physical features they prize–features more common to their race than my own. Count me fed up with magazine articles, blog comments and casual conversations that include some version of Ugh! My eyes are plain old brown–so boring! Every girl wants to be a blonde just once, amirite?
No. You are not right about what every girl wants, particularly this black girl.
Blue eyes can be beautiful, but they are neither automatically nor supremely beautiful. And brown eyes are beautiful, too. Just look at the soulful eyes on the woman above. It is their deep brownness that makes them so compelling.
Look, I’m afraid to get Lasik on my poor, nearsighted peepers. The chance of me subjecting my eyes to a laser for some cosmetic frippery is not likely. But I’ve no beef with someone who desires cosmetic surgery for themselves. I do question the tacit idea that blue eyes are better. (Can you imagine someone hawking a surgery to turn blue eyes brown? Yeah. Me neither.) It’s a side effect of a beauty hierarchy that marginalizes the majority of the world, including women like me.
Photo credit: Mike Manalang
Yes! All the praising of blue eyes irritates the crap out of me. I especially hate the gushing that children of color get when their eyes are light. It makes me crazy. Like we’re not going to gush over your beautiful curls or your intellect, we are going to praise the part of you that marks you as part “white”. I understand why people do it, but it still makes me nuts. I have heard so many say how they hope their children get “light eyes” and I kind of think to myself “Why are they saying this to me? Why do they think it won’t insult me to intimate that my childrens’ eyes are less special or beautiful?” I feel the same way about hair comments (‘Oh, her hair is going to be good, nice hair. Its going to be straight.’ Gag.) and skin color comments.
Color contacts I can understand; sometimes its fun to switch things up I guess? (I don’t have contacts, so I don’t know.) But a permanent change? I can’t really understand that.
Full disclosure: I am a very light-skinned woman of mixed race with green eyes. I find this article immensely disturbing, and if I may add my own tangent, it bugs the crap out of me in children’s animated movies when animals like raccoons or horses or whatever have blue eyes! Like, really? Cute, cuddly animals are not relatable enough with the brown eyes we all know they have?
It makes me sad that someone would want to permanently change such an integral part of who they are.
Well, won’t someone’s spouse (and let’s not kid ourselves, this procedure is marketed towards women) be shocked when 2 “blue”-eyed parents end up with brown eyed kids!
Sarah: I’ve gotten the same response with my own kids. Both my children, a boy and a girl, have gotten praise for their looks as infants, because, and I quote, “Oh, the dark eyes and that dark hair with that light skin!” And I kind of get tight-lipped and quiet, because I can’t help by think that if the kids had ended up with darker skin, NOONE WOULD SAY BOO ABOUT THEIR EYES AND HAIR. It’s the combination of light skin with the dark eyes, combined with a hair texture people can’t “guess” immediately, that make people say something, and I find that really sad.
Now, I’ve been guilty of wondering if either of my kids would have blue eyes, but I really don’t think that’s because I value blue eyes more, but because my brown-eyed MIL passed on recessive blue eyes to at least one daughter (as it showed up in the grandchildren, twice), and I was always curious as to whether my husband had received them too. For all I know, it did, OR they received recessive blue eyes from me, OR they didn’t and both kids have brown eye genes from both their parents. I’m fascinated by the genetics of it, but I really don’t care about anything other than making sure they can SEE.
>Like, really? Cute, cuddly animals are not relatable enough with the brown eyes we all know they have?
Lisa, ITA: It’s the “default white” paradigm of children’s cartoons (and cartoons in general).
Count me in as someone uneasy about the idea of having something done to my eyes (and in this case for something as superficial as changing one’s eye color!) How can we be sure this procedure is safe? I remember watching on a talk show a year ago (probably Tyra Banks but I’m not sure) the story of a young British black girl who had actually gone through with another procedure to change her eye color. The operation resulted in the damaging of her eyes. It was very sad to see how she internalized the racist concept of light eyes being better to the point of undergoing a dangerous procedure in order to get them. And just to add to the conversation behind naturally light-eyed POC’s I hate when people wrongly assume that every light-eyed POC they come across must have European ancestry (whether distant or immediate). They’re so convinced of this that they have the nerve to claim they’re more knowledgeable about a person’s ancestry than the person themselves. I can’t tell you how annoying it is to hear someone claim that all light-eyed people in South Asia have British ancestry!
I think I’ve already discussed my aversion to Whites believing that the mere possession of blond hair and blue eyes means the owner is automatically gorgeous to the point where all I usually get of a physical description of said paragon of pulchritude is that they have blue eyes and blonde hair as if that should be enough for my brown-eyed, greying, nappy-ass haired self. All that tells me is that the describer co-signs on Aryan worship (I’ve seen PLENTY of fugg blond-haired, blue-eyed folks) and I worry about any children I have being around them. Will my children only be attractive if they look more White or at least less Black? Then what does that tell me about what those folks think of me and my looks?
I know my comment is kind of late but Witchsistah…girl, that is the truth! I agree 100%.
It works my nerves when I hear that nonsense. I have dark brown eyes and kinky dark hair. I think blonde hair and blue eyes can be beautiful, but there is much more to beauty than that.
I used to wish that I had blonde hair and blue eyes because I bought into notions of white being right. I think it is probably rare when a Black or biracial girl growing up in America doesn’t feel that way at some point because sooner or later, you will receive the message that you aren’t pretty if you aren’t white.
When I was young, I would hear people saying that so-and-so had “pretty eyes”. Most of the time, the person they were referring to did not have brown eyes like mine. The girl could have been ugly as sin but if she had blue or green or hazel eyes, she was considered a 10. Bonus points if she had “good hair”.
When I was a kid, this lady complimented my little sister on her blue eyes while ignoring me. My mother was offended by this and she told the woman that we were both beautiful. The lady said, “But the little one is prettier…her eyes are so blue!” Right, because my brown eyes were nothing to write home about.
My sister-in-law is a white woman who clearly promotes the Aryan ideal of beauty because of the comments she has made in my presence. She has mousy brown hair that she bleaches blonde (it is actually brittle and goldish-yellow and it looks horrible with her skin) . When she talks about somebody she finds beautiful, she feels the need to mention that the woman in question is blonde, as if that indicates some kind of special attribute required to be beautiful. She is not attractive in the least, her face reminds me of a pitbull. I’m not trying to be mean, but the point is that to many people, blonde hair and blue eyes results in the magical Holy Grail of beauty.
I love Marilyn Monroe, but even the iconic blonde bombshell had naturally brown hair and she was just as beautiful when she was Norma Jeane Baker. But most Americans like to pretend that she was always blonde, never brunette. They would be shocked if they looked at the pictures before she became famous.
I agree with Sarah, too. It bothers me when people say things like “good hair” and “pretty eyes” because it is all about reinforcing white supremacy on some level. These words are never used to describe kinky hair and dark eyes.
I love crystal blue eyes, but I also love deep dark eyes. Who is to say that one is better than the other? I understand that people have preferences but I have a problem with people who try to ram white supremacy down my throat.
“Can you imagine someone hawking a surgery to turn blue eyes brown? Yeah. Me neither.”
If it makes you feel better, my former teacher who had naturally blue eyes used to wear brown contact lenses.
Then again in my country nearly everyone has light eyes, brown is relatively rare. Beauty industry wants people to feel inferior, because otherwise they can’t sell their products, so the idea of beauty is something few women can naturally meet. Once people are unhappy with themselves, they’re more likely to consume diet pills, hair products, etc. which are supposed to buy them happiness and better self-esteem. Obviously it’s never going to happen.
Amen to that! This article really opened up my beautiful brown eyes. When i was a little girl i hated how i looked. I’m a quarter Sicilian and am the only one in my white family that looks it. I hated my nose because it wasn’t small and “cute” like all the other girls. it was large and sloped.(By the way, can you do an article on noses? Most tween girls are actually very insecure about this) I hated my body because it really is true that latin girls mature faster. I felt like an amazon. I was taller and tanner than everybody. These white girls were so tiny! It took them to when i entered junior year in high school to develop to where i always had been. But now it actually amuses me to see all the white girls going tanning and dying their hair darker to make themselves look exotic and not how they truly look themselves with the ethnic phenomenon that resulted from the “Jersey shore” series. Maybe its only in Jersey, but the grass is always greener on the other side.