Rite of passage in black beauty consumerism

Not sure if it is only me and three of my friends that think that as black women who want to look beautiful, we are really duped and never spoilt for choice. When I go in the supermarkets the products for black people are alway hidden at the bottom shelf and if I don’t bend over and really look, all I see are products with smiling white women that are obviously not for my kind.

Now the supermarket is only one of them, when you go to specialised beauty stores you find 10 shades of foundation for white people and only three kinds for black people almost like saying we all look the same! I would say white people look the same coulour and I can count the shades they come in on three fingers but get onto us blacks theres all shades of brown, coffee, cappucino, cafe au lait and no black (thank God no black foundation exists!). I am some shade of dark brown and I struggle to find a foundation that suits me, its either too dark or too light but nothing that is my kind of shade.

Winter has come and I go looking for tights and I can’t find a proper colour that is not a) too shiny b) is some hideous greyish colour that borders on ashy; and c) never ever blends with my colour. I look at the white collection and theres plenty and to add salt to injury, a white woman walks by wearing tights that make her legs look so good you want to touch them! Why can’t I find something like that too?? Am I looking in the wrong place…do I have to scrounge through 50 department and specialised stores to finally find what I am looking for? Am I not market enough for them to produce something that will suit me perfectly and advertise it as such? So I settle for the pitch black or navy and try to console myself that it is winter and so dark colours are fine…but all I really want is what suits me, you know like something my colour!!

Anyway enough of my ranting, all this negative energy is not helping me. My next stop is the clinic where I need to have the stitches on my hand removed. As the nurse removes the band-aid from my cut, I notice that it too is a colour that is closer to the white peoples tone. Actually, all band-aids come in the same colour of either ‘nude’ which is a pinkish whitish colour or stark white. All these blend well with white people but on my black hand they are as visible as a beacon and really look ridiculous. Am I thinking a tad too much about this whole black consumerism, me thinks not. My experiences say not.

At least clothes don’t have that label save for the label of size zero which many of my kind can only hope to squeeze their ample hips in. So with this in mind I go looking for some retail therapy to rid me of all the above negative energy. I go to a lingerie shop and marvel at the lacy thingys in their luxurious makes. I look at a bra I really like and when I read the detail on the label, it says the colour is nude and it is exactly the colour of a naked white person, well maybe not exactly but close to and nowhere near my kind. So what is our colour when we are nude if nude refers to a nude white person?

I promise not to try and get anything else that day, lest it is not meant for my kind and depresses me more. As if to provoke me, I see a black woman with her black daughter and she is clutching a white barbie or some other such kind of doll and there goes my thoughts…even dolls are white! Come to think of it, I have never seen a black doll in a store.

In my depressed mood, I go home and settle to watch TV, maybe that will help ease my bad mood, Theres Oprah on TV and at least here is something black that is really good and makes me proud. It is a documentary on the last days of Martin Luther King with excerpts of his famous speech, “I have a dream…”

Martin Luther King’s dream was to see an America where everyone was equal before the law, an America where people were not judged by the colour of their skin but rather by the content of their character. Today he is not there to live his dream but the people of America and the world are living it and in the political arena, it can never get any better than a black (well maybe coloured) man in the white house as the most powerful politician in the world.

But me and my sisters have a long way to go as far as realising our beauty dreams goes, in getting band-aids or plasters that blend in with our colour, find hair colour that is for our kind of hair, find a bra that says ‘nude’ and is closer to our nude colour, see products with black people advertising them and they are not at the bottom shelf. I dream of the day when as a black professional I will be spoiled for choice between top and bottom end products made for my kind.

Don’t know about other people in other regions of the world, but living in South Africa, I am confronted by these issues everyday and it reminds me that our Rite of Passage to become recognised consumers with products that depict us as such, is still a work in progress.

One last thought, why are we refered to as black when we are closer to brown than black? Just wondering away in wonderland…