When assessing femininity and sexuality in the black community, it is always in terms of black men and here’s what I think: Much of what we are taught about what women are, should be, or have the ability to be can be found in music videos, magazines, Instagram, television etc. When you look at standards of beauty in America, European standards of beauty haven’t changed much, but standards of beauty within the African-American community have changed over the years, which is a blessing and a curse. The beauty is that most black women don’t fit European standards of beauty. While many more black women fit the standard of beauty in the African- American community, not all black women do. In fact, the standard of beauty within our community is still pretty restrictive and, in many ways, I would argue influenced by Euro standards.
I say all of this to black men: Not every woman has a 4-inch waist with 40-inch hips and a 36D bust. Not every woman’s eyebrows will arch perfectly over her big round, or “Chinky (That's a slur)” eyes because not every woman has eyes that look like that or brows that arch like that. Not every woman will be light skinned with pink lips and nicely proportionate features because not every woman has those genes. Not every woman will be shorter than 5′8 and fit perfectly under your arm pit because some women have fathers that are 5 feet and mothers that are 6 feet and that's OK. Not every woman will have even skin and pink lips with eyes that are lighter than her skin because again: GENES.
And for the women who are darker skinned, not all of them will come with beautiful faces the way you imagined, so that their complexions look like the desert as opposed to the vegetables you push to the side of your plate. We won’t walk down the street dripped in oil, so that our skin glistens like something edible. We will be dark and sometimes unevenly so. We will be dark and sometimes unimaginably so. We will be midnight black. Our black will be dark, harsh, and often times our features won’t be so extraordinary that you can overlook it and say we are “still pretty.” Not all of us darker women will be dark and sexy, or dark and something that still compliments you aesthetically walking down the street. Most times our noses will be broad, our eyes will be “ordinary,” our hair might even be cut low. Our shoulders and backs might be wide, our hips might not poke out farther than our shoulders, our stomachs might not be flat and our butts might not be big. Sometimes we will be taller than you, we will have more muscle mass than you, our voices will be deep, maybe even deeper than yours, our hands will be big and rough and we will play as so because we can.
When we are of lighter complexion, we will not always have dainty features that resemble anything other than black. Sometimes we will be lighter but we will have freckles, if not freckles, blemishes. Sometimes we will be lighter but that nose and those lips won’t scream “foreign” and it won’t scream “exotic.” Sometimes we will be lighter, but by no means will we be less black in culture or in genetics. Sometimes we will be lighter, but we will not have hair that is wavy or loosely curled. Sometimes we will be lighter but that’s it, our hair and eyes will be black, our features will be black, and our bodies won’t look like those hour glasses that would be the icing on the cake for you.
Sometimes we will be lighter, but it will not be enough to keep your melanin from seeping through our wombs when we have our kids. Sometimes we will be light but that gene might skip our children because it’s recessive. And even when it is dominant, black genes are spontaneous. Similar to the bodies of all women, our genes are wild in geography, history and code. So please, black men, we will be lighter but don’t take us as tokens for light babies, don’t expect us to be your Instagram models or your video vixens because sometimes we are light but our sexuality doesn’t mirror music videos. Sometimes we will be lighter but we are black in every sense of the word.
Light or dark, curvy or athletically built or even skinny, sometimes we will or won’t be any and everything you want or are looking for. We will always be woman enough. We will always be feminine enough. Our womanhood, blackness and sexuality will never need your validation and if what we are and choose to be as women are not enough or too much for you. That is between you and your masculinity. That is between you and your self-love. That is between you and your blackness.
