The Sunday News
Thandekile Moyo
I MET a girl today who told me of what she called colourism. She said it is discrimination based on complexion. Well, honestly, it was my first time hearing there is even a term for it. I googled it and came across this definition: colourism is the prejudice or discrimination against individuals with a dark skin tone, typically among people of the same ethnic or racial group.
Wow! I am really surprised that it is a “thing”. After giving it some thought, I realised that I have heard dark people being denigrated. I have heard of people being called dark and ugly. I have also heard people praising how light and beautiful some girl is. I’ve also heard people exclaiming over a baby “obomvu gebhu” (extremely light skinned) like it’s the best thing that could ever have happened.
Once I opened my mind to it, I realised that I have actually been surrounded by this colourism all my life. I remember now, how people I last saw ages ago have upon meeting me, exclaimed over how dark I have become. I remember having to explain in the past to friends in boarding school why I always came back from the holidays looking darker in complexion. I would then have to explain that Gwanda is hot thus my complexion changes whenever I go there. I have no scientific evidence to this theory but I think that’s a plausible explanation.
Memories of the time I went to visit Gwanda after spending time in Harare flood my mind. I remember everyone commenting over how “light” I looked. Some marvelled over it, others accused me of skin bleaching, some even asked for tips. At that time, it really didn’t click what mindset we hold about complexion and beauty.
This has brought me to the conclusion that women with an inferiority complex have no choice but to bleach their skin. Everyone wants to be beautiful and everyone wants to be attractive. It is unfortunate that society’s ideas of beauty are quite inflexible, leaving a lot of people aspiring to be in that small spectrum of the people accepted as beautiful.
Over the years there has been a lot of noise about women being “fake.” We are accused of not accepting our natural beauty and trying too hard to look white. We are “encouraged” to embrace our Africanism; to revel in our natural hair, accept our natural skin colours and shy away from make-up. This is the gospel preached to us by our men, who act like they have “seen the light!”
I can’t help but think our men are hypocrites! On paper they claim to like the “natural” woman but in action, they buzz around the light-skinned, Brazilian hair wearing and dolled-up girl!
Yes, there are lots of women out there who claim not to care about anybody’s standard of beauty but their own; but the majority of us, just want to look beautiful for you. We want to be attractive to you.
This simply means that, if men seem to have an affinity for light skinned women, deep down, every woman who wants a man, will wish they were light in complexion. If men seem to shun afro-wearing women, we will burn our hair with chemicals and buy weird looking hair pieces in the hope that will get you to pick us. If you always hover around perfectly made up girls, we will smear our faces with muddy make-up and shock you with hot-red lips.
How else can we attain the “looks” you want except by being fake; if we were not born light skinned and long haired. We are always advised to treat the cause of problems and not the symptoms, that should also apply to the issue of bleaching, fake hair and ghastly make-up.
The problem is the mindset of our men. It is our men’s idea of beauty, their standard of attractiveness that should change. Our men must truly embrace and appreciate black beauty for us to confidently rock our afros and flaunt our melanin-rich skin.
Ideally, a confident woman must not care what others think. She dresses to express herself and not to attract. She must accept whatever God gave her and be thankful to be alive. A woman of substance focuses on inner beauty more than outer beauty. Loving ourselves should be enough.
You preach this to us but in the same breath look down upon us if we fail to find husbands after we reach a certain age. The end game for a woman, is therefore to find a husband.
In our bid to find husbands, we mutilate ourselves in all sorts of ways trying to be attractive. We do all these things for our men to love us and for them to choose us. Imagine then, how unfair it is for all this to backfire. After bleaching we start to look unnatural and weird, cheap fake hair makes us look
like we’re carrying bird’s nests on our heads and makeup leaves us looking like ghosts!
It is time we redefine beauty to suit our own context and in a way that includes all our complexions and all our hair types.
I have heard claims that in our culture, beauty is functional. This means that beauty is more of what you do than what you look like. A cheerful woman is seen as beautiful. So is a hard-working and peace loving one. I identify with functional beauty, I respect the idea and I believe it is fair.
Functional beauty gives women the opportunity to choose whether or not to be beautiful. It gives those who were not born gorgeous the chance to excel in beauty by their choices and actions.
Only when our society stops treating dark skinned, kinky haired girls as second class citizens can we stop this madness of chasing unattainable western ideas of beauty.
