Student speaks up
0By JT Harmon
As part of Black History Month, junior UPIKE student Mary Britton gave a presentation titled “You’re pretty for a black girl: Cultural standards of beauty in African Americans.” The presentation was for everyone on the UPIKE campus and was held in Chrisman Auditorium Wednesday, Feb. 25.
The presentation was about the history of black women and how the darker they were, the less attractive they seemed and also how society portrayed darker African American women as masculine. Britton also described how today the darker African American women are bleaching their skin to become more attractive to everyone else, and how in magazines they lighten the skin of darker women to make them more appealing.
Britton said the reason she did this presentation was because “during middle school and high school, I wasn’t confident about being dark skinned. I felt ugly. It wasn’t until college that I became confident with my skin. I just pray that my sisters learn to love themselves and the skin they are in.”
Britton showed two separate videos, one of fellow African American UPIKE males and what their ideal black women would look like. The results she got from that video was that almost all preferred a light skinned African American female compared to a dark skinned African American female.
The other video was a video of children and dolls. The dolls were white and black, and the children were asked a series of questions. Some of the questions asked which doll is prettier and which doll is bad. For both races, the answers were the same even when it came down to asking the kids which doll they would rather play with and why. The answer being the white doll because it was pretty and a good doll, compared to the black doll that was considered ugly and bad.
Fellow UPIKE student David Roberson said, “In my eyes this presentation is good for everyone who isn’t an African American. It shows that even as kids the media and many other influences are telling us that the lighter the better and that African American people are bad or mean.”