Black Beauty

This week the reading The Black Beauty Myth really struck me as interesting and insightful. Sirena Riley brings to light that fact that black women have been excluded from the ongoing discussion about body image. There seems to be an underlying assumption that all black women do not struggle with issues of body image, which Riley asserts is not the case. She says, "I would love to believe that as a whole we are completely secure with our bodies. But that would completely miss the racism, sexism, and classism that affect the specific ways in which black women's beauty ideals and experiences of body dissatisfaction are often different than those of white women." (p. 227) As I was looking for an article to blog about this week I came across one entitled The 30 Most Beautiful Black Women in History. (the link is below) This article is mainly pictures of black women from across the decades who are famous for various reasons. What I noticed about the article most was the fact that the majority of the women pictured had fairly light skin and they all were of an ideal body type; tall, thin, many with straight hair. I thought this really spoke to the racism, sexism, and classism that Riley speaks about as affecting black women's beauty ideals.

http://photos.essence.com/galleries/30-most-beautiful-black-women-history/#128669_35736