Beauty. What is beauty? Is it the slimness of a woman’s hips? The broad white tooth smile? Darker skin? Lighter skin? What is beauty? Beauty is a combination of qualities, such as shape, color, or form that pleases the aesthetic senses, especially sight. In other words, beauty is expressed in qualities of shape or color and gage a response from person to person. A common phrase associated with beauty is a Greek proverb that states ” Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” This is due to each person’s perception of beauty, which may have been impacted by their individual experiences. Beauty can be found within everyone and everything, but it’s up to the individual to look for it, or believe it’s their to begin with.  Although each person has a different outlook on beauty, some people may take their personal standpoint on beauty to rate others and put down an entire race of people. Firstly, beauty isn’t the outward appearance, but rather the embodiment from the outward in, and secondly, who are you to determine who’s beautiful or not.

When speaking of beauty, it can be in reference to a flower, a car, etc. However, out of all the things previously mentioned, only one gets ridiculed about their beauty to the extreme. The one who gets ridiculed the most about their beauty are women. Not only are they ridiculed about their beauty, but also about the way they choose to express said beauty. Looking specifically at African American women, or simply women of African descent, they’re held to a higher standard and expected to check off all boxes or are labeled “ugly.” In the words of Confucius, “everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it,” so the idea of ugly simply doesn’t exist and is just promoted to raise revenue for plastic surgery and makeup industries. For black women their beauty is defined by “thickness,” hair type, and complexion. Although being thick is commonly talked about and praised, being too thick is also a problem. An example of this is Jennifer Hudson. Prior to her weight loss, and slight change of appearance, she was talked down upon. Although her beauty hasn’t changed, the weight loss was beneficial to her public image. Hair type is another big one for defining the beauty for black women. For those who have type 4A ,they’re given more leeway on crude hair comments, but 4C hair on the end of the hair spectrum, is given the bad end of the stick. For black hair to be perceived as beautiful, it has to be slicked down, straightened, and simply “tamed” to make others regard it with some decency. Then for complexion, the lighter the better. When a darker or medium tone women is rated on her beauty, it’s often not with the best comments. Or it comes with a backhand compliment, such as, ” you’re cute for a black girl.”

Black women are held at a different standard, and often treated as not beautiful at all. However, women of other ethnicity are praised when mimicking what is naturally possessed by that of a black women. An example is Kylie Jenner. Prior to her surgeries she was lip-less, and lacked shape. Then after she received lip fillers, and surgery on her breast, and buttocks, her followers increased and there was adoration for her. She even had a challenge named after her, called the “Kylie Jenner Challenge,” which gave temporarily enlarged lips. This is rather strange, due to the fact that women who naturally have fuller lips are degraded, and curvier women are put down about cellulite, and stretch marks which is a normal thing. The real is belittled, and the fake is praised. It is quite unusual, because you would expect the plastic to be judged, but such are the things in life. Beauty is possessed by all, regardless of shape or color.