“… Her skin is of a dark hue,
Ifeanacho MaryAnn (2010)
Her exotic eyes mesmerize you.
Her pretty face framed by regal braids,
Her beauty, one that never fades.
Curves rounded full,
A shape that is perfectly womanly…”
This is part of a sonnet I wrote to the “True African woman” as a twelve plus-year-old SS1 (10th grade) student. I remember how happy I felt while writing this poem. I was still testing out my literary skills and was so crazy about making my lines rhyme while still keeping their meaning (yay prepubescent me!)
To my young mind and heart, a true African woman was curvy with full and rude hips and a flat belly that quivered with each step she took, dark as a plum or with skin as rich and as perfect as chocolate with long, long braids, lush lips that promised unimaginable pleasures.
As beautiful and as regal as this mental picture is, this is, unfortunately, half of a very voluminous story. There is no one set-in-stone way to be African.
There is this tendency to super-humanize black women when praising them. We talk about how she is strong with her black gold skin and gravity-defying hair.
When you search #blackgirlmagic and other such pro-black hashtags on Instagram, you’ll see some very beautiful women and some very heart-warming memes and posts about black women.
However, I feel amid all the applause and praises, we tend to forget that the black woman is first, human, exhibiting both the lauded and less appreciated characteristics of humanity.
The true African woman is human.
She has flaws and weaknesses
She gets tired, and she makes mistakes
She’s that beautiful mélange of perfectly imperfect,
She is a woman of African descent
She is curvy, slim and chubby
With taut skin and wobbly bits,
She is tall, short and everything in between
She comes in different shades from marshmallow to a decadent cacao hue
She is a paradox
Strong, steely, and determined
And at other times, soft and vulnerable
She faces life squarely and bravely
And other times, she breaks down
Because she has been strong for so long
She is beautiful, average and ugly
Not because she is African
But because humans come in different tiers of beauty,
She can be excellent, and she can be average
And that’s ok because we all have different capabilities
Despite the magic in her skin and her gravity-defying hair
She is first, human
With human struggles and emotions,
With human wants and needs
Originally published on Medium.
Like what you read? Check out Colorism: Is My Black Really Beautiful?
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