Where do I begin? It's been a minute since her last CD, and fans have missed her stay-true-to-yourself, honest, self-celebrating lyrics that made us love her back in 1999 when she burst on the music scene. Songs about self-acceptance, empowerment, and love in all its forms were the lyrics she was made of. It was the cusp of a new millenium and she was right there to encourage us with thoughtful, intelligent ideas of womanhood and true beauty. And then the promotional photo of her upcoming project emerged about a month ago and we've all been scratching our heads ever since. Some have felt betrayed, disappointed and sad for her and a combinationn of all of these and wonder, if she would bleach her skin and have a nose job what does it take for a dark-skinned black woman with West African features to love and appreciate the way God created her.
Does the media have some responsibility in this? And I do include our black media, perhaps especially. With the ever blonde Beyonce aka "Mrs. Carter", Solange, Halle Berry, Rihanna, Ciara and "Don't hate me because I'm beautiful" Keri Hilson, when do we ever consistently see a dark-skinned sister as an object of beauty and desire in magazines, movies or music videos? How many cocoa sisters have been told "you're pretty for a dark-skinned girl" as if that's a compliment. Many of us look at ourselves in the mirror and it doesn't match what our society tells us is pretty. Sure, we relish our hips and the natural curvy bodies that only African women have, if only because our men value and crave those physical attributes. But as for the rest of our bodies like our hair (length and texture), full lips, width of our noses, and skin color? I'm not so sure. This isn't to say that we're categorically dissatisfied with our looks either, because in spite of it all black women rate highest with satisfaction around their physical appearance which is great news. However, this India Arie thing got me wondering: is her skin lightening and shaved off nostrils more representative of our collective struggle with beauty images or is this an individual choice of a woman in the music industry's spotlight and what she succombed to.
I mean to be honest, I felt betrayed when I saw the photo. She sang about loving yourself and then clearly bleached her skin and had a nose job. Is it something she felt inwardly all her life but never really dealt with and simply decided to change her body and re-create herself? But then I listen to the lyrics of "Brown Skin" and I feel so connected to my brown self I can't imagine wanting to be anything else.
As human beings we are so complex. I mean psychologically what black women have been through and the fact that we're still highly functional and continue to strive is amazing. But maybe we're masking a lot of discontent with our own physical selves and compensating, obsessing or re-directing that hurt in other ways. The weave thing has me buggin for one. I see sisters addicted to these things with hair down to their waist and have to wonder when is this trend going to stop. I was in the Mid-West recently and noticed a lot of blue and green colored eye contacts. It occurred to me that something is happening here. Then, I've personally come to believe that Kim Kardashian has just way too much presence in Black social media to be coincidental. No other white celebrity is as covered in the black media as much as this woman. I've started to wonder if (some) black women truthfully, deep down inside really want to be her. I mean she's a shapely white girl with long straight hair and a tan. She's just too ubiquitous in Black media, unlike say Lindsay Lohan, Taylor Swift or Anne Hathaway.
It seems to me that for many black people, identifying with being black is just really hard. Mandy don't want to be white, but they don't want to be black either. There is some variation of the India Arie theme being played out all the time in our community because of the psyche that white supremacy has produced. When a brother wants a "dime piece" because he wants his daughter to have "pretty" hair or the newborn baby boy's head that gets constantly shaped by his mother so that his head isn't shaped so "Black". How about when the temperature is scorching and you're sitting in the park and you see all kinds of black people under their umbrellas, yet rarely do you see people of other races under an umbrella you know what that's about. I mean it's insanity and yet it goes on and on. So can I be too shocked by India? All of us have issues with racialism, colorism and all the rest of it to some extent. It takes the desire and necessary work to untangle the tentacles of white supremacy on our brains to overcome the damage that is tolled on us historically and today. I don't know Ms. Arie personally, I don't how many times she was called "tar baby" as a kid on the playground or how the dudes dissed her when she was fifteen or the old ladies at church who screwed their faces up at her because she wouldn't straighten her hair. It probably has been a lot of bullshit she's had to overcome on that front and maybe her music was her medicine for healing those wounds. A salve on her soul. But not the cure for the deeper mental and spiritual hurts she may still carry.
I still love her music and wish her the best. I regret her "transformation" and hope she gets honest about it all. For her sake, not mines or her other music fans. It's clearly not the lighting of the photography going on there, but rather something on the inside that we, the public, may never learn about.
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