Negative Self-Images Influence Black Women to Emulate European Standards of Beauty: Post Civil War-1960s (Excerpt from essay for Gender & Sex Roles course)

After Reconstruction, many African Americans believed that beauty was essential to gaining respect and privileges from whites. Three hundreds years of being subjected to white beauty ideals led many African Americans to measure their physical appearance against such standards. Thus, to move up the socioeconomic hierarchy and to strive to become attractive, African Americans employed mechanisms, such as hair straightening and skin lightening, to resemble white beauty ideals. Madam CJ Walker, the first self-made American female millionaire, was one of the earliest pioneers of the African American beauty market. She revolutionized the cosmetic industry by creating a treatment for hair loss, which, in her day, plagued many African American women due to poor diet and scalp disease. However, "the Walker system," a hair straightening system that used a heated metal comb to straighten black women's hair, was her most lucrative invention. Reflecting on his childhood, writer Thomas C. Flemmings comments on Walker's popularity as he states, "Every black woman in the United States knew who Madam Walker was, unless they lived down in the swamps of Mississippi or someplace like that. And they probably heard about her there too, because her process went out all over the country. Women started opening up beauty parlors, and they used her products. The compelling drive behind her success was that black people wanted to look white" (Flemmings, 1997). Other products such as "No Kink" promised to straighten undesirable, kinky hair. Lye-based chemical hair relaxers later became a more permanent hair straightener used by African Americans.

Skin bleaching products such as "Black-No-More," "Fred Palmer's Skin Whitener," "Black-Skin Remover," Dr. Read's Magic Face Bleach, "Imperial Whitener," "Shure White," Turner's "Mystic Face Bleach," and many others, simultaneously became popular methods to emulate white standards of beauty (Gatewood, 1996, p. 2447). Advertisements, such as those that urged African Americans to, "Lighten your skin race men and women by using Black & White Ointment. Be attractive. Throw off the chains that have held you back from the prosperity that rightly belongs to you," influenced African American women who believed in such claims (Hall et al., 1992 p. 50, 51). Although some of these skin lighteners were barred from mail because of their fraudulent claims and skin damaging chemicals, the sale of skin lighteners continued well into the 1960s.

Many African American women bought skin lighteners and hair straighteners because they believed that light skin and straight hair paved the way to personal and professional success and could even potentially combat stereotypes, such as those that claimed African Americans were poorly groomed and incompetent. Other African Americans linked the use of these products to a lack of self-esteem amongst African American women. They argued that altering hair texture and skin color could have potentially harmful effects on skin and hair, and that wearing one's natural, unprocessed hair was the best way to challenge white standards of beauty without compromising one's heritage and identity. Activist and Pan Africanist Marcus Garvey was a sympathizer of those who opposed hair straighteners and skin lighteners as he refused to accept advertisements for them in his publication Negro World.

A negative self-image motivated many black females to use hair straighteners and skin lighteners in the 1950s and the early-1960s. In fact, many parents taught their children the superiority of white physical features and the inferiority of black physical features. Fair-complexioned political activist and former Black Panther leader, Elaine Brown, states in her autobiography, A Taste of Power, that her mother "would always tell me how beautiful I was, 'the most beautiful girl in the world.' I was not like the other colored girls in my neighborhood, she told me. They had skin that was too dark and facial features that were too African and hair that was not 'good' like mine" (Brown, 1992 p. 21). Other children in her neighborhood reinforced such attitudes, as they would chant the popular rhyme: "If you white, you right. If you yellow, you mellow. If you brown, stick around. If you black, get back. Way back" (Brown. 1992 p. 31).

Former Black Panther, Assata Shakur, explains in her autobiography, Assata, that self-hate was even manifested in schoolyard fights and altercations during the 1950s. Shakur stated that "behind our fights, self-hatred was clearly visible. We would call each other 'jungle bunnies' and 'bush boogies.' We would talk about each other's ugly, big lips and flat noses. We would call each other 'pickaninnies' and nappy-haired so so's" (Shakur, 1987 p. 30).

However, in the mid-1960s through the1970s, African Americans finally defined and embraced their own standards of beauty. The "Black is Beautiful" Movement, inspired by Malcolm X's doctrines and by a number of dark-skinned Black Panthers such as Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, and Elridge Cleaver, affirmed the beauty of dark skin, African facial features, and kinky ("nappy") hair. Social activist Stokely Carmichael, who coined the slogan "Black Power," explained the spirit underlying the new African American aesthetic as he declared, "We have to stop being ashamed of being black. A broad nose, a thick lip and nappy hair is us, and we are going to call that beautiful" (Spencer, 1996, p. 1167). Soon, African Americans abandoned chemical relaxers in favor of large afros that symbolized African American pride. Adorning themselves with dashikis and afros, many blacks challenged white America's conventional beauty ideals and cultural norms. Yet, even during the temporary "Black is Beautiful" Movement, many African Americans still strove to attain a white aesthetic. In 1968, skin lighteners constituted a fourteen million dollar business. The Black Power Movement lost its momentum in the 1970s as most African American women straightened their hair to look respectable to white employers.

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