‘Look, girls!” my mother whispered to my sister and me, surreptitiously pointing. Ahead of us, a white girl with a long, thick braid of blond hair reaching to her waistline strode briskly through the mall. My sister and I watched wistfully as her braid swung loosely, back and forth, in time with her steps. We watched her and her hair walk all the way down the mall until she disappeared around a corner.
This memory takes up space in my mind, and I can still instantly conjure up the envy I felt, and how ashamed I felt of my own hair.
On another day when I was around the same age, my mother rewarded me for demonstrating efforts in attending to my hair care by combing my hair into a soft halo that framed my face and gently fluffed as I moved. I was devastated. I thought I was ugly because no one had ever told me that my hair, as it grew out of my head, was a beautiful crown. I must have looked upset because my mother asked me what was wrong, and when I tearfully said, “I don’t like it,” she exasperatedly pulled my hair back into its usual braids.
I felt very guilty because I understood that she was trying to do a kind thing for me. But I knew that she was wrong — all she had done was make me uglier than I usually was. And she didn’t say anything to me to contradict what I thought.
Growing up, no one ever told me I was beautiful, or even pretty. No one ever wistfully watched my hair walk down the mall. No one told me my brown skin was perfect, rich, and vibrant in the sunlight (as I see now in pictures of me from long ago.) No one complimented the shine of my hair, the thickness of my twists, or the beauty of my eyes, with pupils dark as obsidian.
No one explained to me that white people loved brown skin so much they laid out in the sun, damaging their pale, unmelanated skin to try to get closer to the beauty I was naturally born with. No one ever told me I had anything worth envying.
I have felt ugly for a disheartingly significant portion of my life. Clothes designed for narrow Caucasian hips strained and unattractively bulged where my curves asserted themselves. My long arms jutted from sleeves inches too short because they were designed for a slight, petite woman. My rich milk-chocolaty skin that glowed with lotion and coconut oil dulled under pastel hues crowding every store makeup rack, designed for pale skin and fair tones.
Clothing looked ill-fitting and garish on me. Makeup and sunscreen left my skin somehow both ashen and greasy at the same time. My hair, as I have said before, stubbornly refused to feather or move when I walked.
Michelle Obama checks off many of the boxes into which women in America are taught to fit: she is thin, fit, and obediently wears her hair in straightened styles that complies with the requirement that professional Black women in America force their hair into white-looking styles rather than wear their hair in natural styles as it grows out of their head. Yet she was publicly described as an “Ape in heels,” and “Gorilla face.”
Serena Williams, who won 23 Grand Slam championships and is the greatest tennis player of all time, was described by countless anonymous online posters as “monkey,” “ape,” and “a gorilla in a skirt.” The online magazine Insider ran an article in August 2022 describing the many ways in which Serena has been mocked, ridiculed, and described as an animal or a man based on her skin and body as a Black woman.
So is this negative messaging about Black women’s skin, hair, and bodies being ugly and unattractive really any less damaging to me now that I am a fully grown adult? After all, only 17 states currently protect a Black woman’s right to wear her hair the way it naturally grows, in natural styles. In all 32 other states, a Black woman can be reprimanded, disciplined, or fired for not wearing her hair in a white-approved, white-looking style.
Setting aside for a moment the hugely problematic truth that anyone at all would be judged for the way they look, as a female trying to navigate a world that is filled with people who do judge you based on your looks, and as a Black woman whose features do not make the social cut, these opinions about Michelle Obama’s or Serena Williams’ looks are devastating.
If Michelle Obama is ugly, then how can I be beautiful, with my unstraightened hair, generous curves, and inability to do even one pushup?
The relentless racist messaging and centering of white features as the standard for feminine beauty in America, and the contempt of Black skin, hair and features, is made even more insulting by the fact that from the time of slavery until now, white males have held (and do hold) hypocritical views of Black women. Blacks have been viewed as oversexed and promiscuous, and therefore Black women are viewed as sexual objects available for exploitation and casual use.
The 1870 census, the first census that included most Black people as humans and not property, lists many of my ancestors as Mulatto. This means they were Blacks (per the 1% rule) mixed with white ancestry. The white ancestry was almost universally from coerced relations with white enslavers and other white males with whom my female ancestors were forced into contact.
When financially lucrative, Black women’s bodies were a gold mine. These white male slave owners increased their net worth by impregnating their enslaved Black females, and added their own children to the list of slave bodies they owned as financial assets. In fact, when Congress passed The Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves [from Africa], which went into effect on Jan. 1, 1808, the slave population in this country exploded from 1,191,362 in 1810 to 3,953,760 in 1860, a mere 50 years later, in part due to this exploitation of the Black female body. As commodities, we Black women are apparently irresistible.
Yet 200 years later I, with my brown skin and hair that reflects both the bloodlines of my Black ancestors and my white enslaver ancestors, still live in a society that largely cannot look at a beautiful Black woman and admit that whole industries exist to make white women’s skin look darker, their straight hair curlier, their slim builds more curvy — all features with which I was born. I live in a society that still looks at a Black woman through a white lens and sees an “ugly gorilla.”
Tolley M. Jones lives in Easthampton. She writes a monthly column for the Gazette. She can be reached at columnist@gazettenet.com.