"I can't wait to have my cute little mixed kids! They're going to have such good hair." I stared at my friend in disbelief. Did she really just say that? "I think we should be careful with the language we use with our future children. I mean, what is "good hair"?" I told her. She thought about it for a bit, then shrugged her shoulders.
Lets admit it. Relationships are beautiful. Especially relationships where the counterparts share different ethnic backgrounds, religions, or even races. There is something special about seeing two people with these key differences coming together and unifying those aspects of themselves. However, are millennials beginning to feed into the exoticism of interracial couples and mixed children? Celebrities like Zendaya and Jesse Williams are deemed as highly attractive...which they most definitely are. But is our overall admiration of their unique features just another way that we perpetuate the exoticism of people who are mixed?
If you scroll through any social media platform (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.) you will occasionally see a post of a biracial baby with tan skin and blue eyes, or a black and white couple holding hands in a field of flowers. Even in television commercials for Old Navy and Cheerios, interracial couples are slowly beginning to become the faces of major brands. Why is this? On one hand, it is great that interracial couples are not being shunned, but celebrated and highlighted. There is definitely more than one kind of relationship and debuting an interracial one through social media or television is a step in the right direction. However, perhaps these brands are feeding into the hybrid vigor that has taken course among millennials. We are beginning to have the mindset that mixing biological features will create a superior and more attractive individual. This becomes a problem if we deem our own races as inferior in the process. Another issue arises if we begin to seek partners who are of a certain race or ethnicity for the sake of satisfying our unhealthy craving for being in an interracial relationship.
So, when my friends say that they can't wait to have mixed kids with "good hair" or that they have a preference for only white men, it makes me think twice about whether or not we are putting interracial couples and mixed children on unnecessary pedestals...because at the end of the day all couples and all children are absolutely beautiful.
