00:00I know I shouldn't maybe feel this strongly about it, but if I'm just being honest, when
00:06I see non-black people who have gotten work done to appear more black, I am triggered.
00:15I think it's frustrating when I see black women all over the world be objectified and
00:22just called big booty hoes all day long, but Kylie Jenner is treated with respect and can
00:28run a million trillion dollar company that is based on her butt that looks like mine.
00:35People pay a lot of money for some things that our genetics give us naturally.
00:40She may have wide hips, she may have thick lips, wider nose, shape, big butt, broad shoulders,
00:48hair, nappy hair, kinky curly curls.
00:52It's really hard to say one feature or a combination of features is a black feature,
00:57but history and racism have sort of essentialized blackness into a phenotype, which is really,
01:03really sad.
01:04When people notice certain features on black girls, if it's a feature that they find beautiful,
01:10people have a tendency to ask whether you're mixed or where are your parents from as if
01:16you can't just be 100% black and have those features.
01:21Everybody loves black features until they're on a black woman.
01:24Growing up for me, I had a ton of all over the place features.
01:29How do I have 4C hair but green eyes?
01:32And it wasn't until I got older that I just realized that blackness comes in such a spectrum.
01:38Growing up in school, yeah, I did get bullied.
01:39I did get picked on.
01:40Something I learned for myself was wit.
01:42So like when somebody would say something about me being dark skinned, the jokes came back.
01:47So yeah, I'm dark skinned, but you're stupid.
01:50Colorism is real.
01:51Featurism is real.
01:52There's definitely a difference between the whitewashing of features and colorism.
01:57When you talk about the media or the fashion industry picking palatable black women, we
02:04often think about colorism.
02:07But those types of choices can be done in a number of ways.
02:12Colorism is super obvious and probably is the number one.
02:14But also you can choose a dark skinned model who has super white European features.
02:21I'm very cognizant of how there's a lot of hostility within the black community and a lot of hurt and
02:27anger
02:27around sort of who gets ahead because they're fairer skinned or they have straighter hair or whatnot.
02:32And I know I have definitely been advantaged because of a lot of that.
02:37And so I try and be really cognizant of not perpetuating those harmful stereotypes in my day-to-day life.
02:44I think a lot of what human beings are attracted to is novelty.
02:48So when someone looks a little different than what we expect a black person to look like, you're just naturally
02:54drawn to it.
02:56And sometimes just being drawn to it is masked by saying that person is so gorgeous and beautiful and probably
03:02so smart and capable.
03:03Whereas a person who may be a little bit more familiar looking, you would never necessarily automatically attribute those wonderful
03:11characteristics to them.
03:12I want the world to be a place where little black girls don't feel like they need to hide from
03:19the sun in the summertime
03:21or not play the sports that they want to play for fear that their bodies might get too muscular
03:26and where they don't have to worry about how their features will be perceived in the workplace, at interviews.
03:35Just the things that we unnecessarily dealt with for a long time.
03:39I would like for the world to be a place where that's no longer an issue for black girls.
03:45Thank you so much for watching R29 Unbothered.
