In the 18th century, black bodies were considered ape-like, due to their “eccentrically elliptical” hair, flat noses and “thick protruding lips.” These features were mocked in minstrel shows in which actors accentuated their lips and used black face for comic relief. 
Since then, many black people have been deemed unappealing or “less beautiful” than whites because of these features. Currently, society is embracing the adaptation of these aspects among those who are not black and even praising them for how beautiful they appear due to their robust posteriors and plump lips.
When Kylie Jenner revealed that she was receiving lip injections, hundreds of teens applauded her new pout. Many attempted the “Kylie Jenner Challenge,” which supposedly plumps your lips but realistically results in swelling and bruising. In an interview with Daily News, 19-year-old New Yorker, Sara Lewis admitted she enhanced her lips at the age of 17 after “seeing celebrities like the Kardashians with full lips.” Dr. Yael Halaas, a plastic surgeon on the Upper East Side, said she injects around 20 teens a week with the $500 lip plumping collagen. However, despite Jenner and the Kardashian family making full lips more popular, black women still fall victim to judgment. During the 2015 New York Fashion Week, MAC Cosmetics uploaded a photo to Instagram of a black model wearing dark purple lipstick.
The picture prompted a plethora of racist comments comparing the women’s lips to a fish, an ape and fetishizing black women as whole. Some even threatened to unfollowing the account.
In 2014, Kim Kardashian attempted to break the Internet on Paper Magazine’s Winter cover in which she posed with a champagne glass on her backside. The shot was a replica from photographer Jean-Paul Goude’s book "Jungle Fever," in which a black model was featured.
The original is controversial because of its inclusion in a book with a blatantly racist title and the portrayal of black bodies as objects, fetishized for their prominent features. Black women faced scrutiny in the early 1800s, as well. Most famously in the case of Sarah Baartman, a Khoikhoi woman who traveled with a freak show because her “large buttocks and unusual coloung made her the object of fascination by the colonial Europeans. She was displayed, half naked, in a street that was full of various oddities like ‘the greatest deformity in the world.’”
Ironically, Kardashian’s Paper Magazine photos were revered by many as “sexy.”
These are clear examples of societal double standards. It is unfair for women to adapt the features of African-Americans and for society to then label these attributes beautiful when we fail to award the same praise to black women. Obviously, there are many naturally robust individuals who are not appropriating any race and for those who do enhance aspects of their bodies, it is not a bad thing. Individuals don't alter their features unless they think the change is beautiful. The problem is not those who undergo procedures, but those who claim one look is "better" on a specific race. African-American women are constantly victimized, fetishized and objectified because of their skin color and bodies. It is time we stopped scrutinizing these women and telling them they are not worthy of the same praise others receive.
