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Shakeria Corsey Professor Lago English-1100 25 November 2013 America the Beautiful Here in America beauty is based on whatever society says is beautiful and is acceptable. American women try to obtain this impossible image of what society and men say is the perfect person. What consists of the perfect woman? Usually the perfect woman is someone who is skinny and beautiful and by beautiful, its the celebrities and models we all love and admire. By being an African American its even harder to obtain this image of being beautiful. This begins to make you question what is beauty, how has this all become and who decides what beauty is? Ever since I could imagine beauty is the focus of most things in this world today and me being black makes it more of a struggle. Ulmer writes, Womens struggle for identity, unfortunately, often continues to be associated with conditions of beauty. Young girls continue to learn, through reading traditional childrens literature such as Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Snow White, that prettiness often leads to success (1). At this young age children are exposed to these stories and already beginning to believe that beauty is the all of all. Commonly when young female children are asked what they want to be when they grow up they all say they want to be a princess. They all have dreams to become this beautiful person as an adult and have this beautiful fairytale life but in the end that almost never happens. Society keeps on encouraging

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this; and this will be a never ending cycle of finding this impossible fairytale beauty. As a child all the little Barbie dolls and fairytale princesses were white and had long straight hair and it was everything I wanted to be. When I was growing up as child the color of my skin was not my worries at all, but of course I always wondered why most of the Barbie dolls were white and why all my favorite princesses had white skin and long hair that I always dreamed of having. As a young adult, teenagers start to have this dream of becoming the person they admire on television which is usually some model or celebrity who society says is the perfect example of beauty. In the film, America the Beautiful, statistics said that on average every week a teenager is exposed to media on the internet 7.6 hours, television 10.6 hours, and radio 13.5 hours (ATB). I believe this to be true because every day I find myself always looking on some blogging site or looking at the latest fashions or beauty tips. People use makeup to make them look prettier and make it look like they have the perfect skin. In America the Beautiful, it was said that, Nine out of ten girls regularly use cosmetics at the age of fourteen. Also, Americans spend over 45 billion per year on cosmetics and beauty products (ATB). Women in America spend so much time and money on trying to portray this beauty they see that model and celebrities have. Most models and celebrities have some kind of plastic surgery or Botox so that they can have the beauty that they have. Does beauty really matter this much that we have to always go to these extreme measures to achieve it? Furthermore, Ulmer argues, Americas perceptions of Black women are framed by a host of derogatory images and assumptions that proliferated during and in the aftermath of slavery with some permutations, exist even today. Because this image of black women is still pervasive in todays culture, black women continue to feel their worth is being challenged (2).

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Being an African American teenager, though racism is over I still feel that African Americans are an outcast in our society and I started to be more self-conscious of my skin color. I felt that in order to be beautiful and be accepted in todays society of beaut y I need to have long luxurious hair, an amazing body, and wear makeup so I can have the perfect skin. In this book I read it states, Blacks were stigmatized on the basis of their skin color, the texture of their hair, and the shape of their lips (Craig 36). I can relate to this because I used to be very uncomfortable with the size of my lips because they were bigger than normal size. Its already bad that society gives African Americans a hard time to achieve this beauty but we make it even difficult on ourselves. Many people I know say that people with darker skin arent as beautiful as the ones with lighter skin, for example, in hip-hop music videos most of the times you see lighter skinned women because theyre the prettier ones. For African Americans, racial category is a fact of life, imposed by a society structured, in numerous ways, on the basis of race. With or without a social movement, African Americans rarely have the luxury of forgetting their race (Craig 156). No matter what happens the world will not let us forget the color of our skin. For example, they have magazines like the worlds most beautiful African American woman. Why does it have to be categorized by skin color, it should just be The worlds most beautiful woman. Though, Im proud of the skin Im in, being black today is always going to be a discussion in our world. Beauty in the African American community is much different and difficult to deal with. Countless famous African Americans are known for their outstanding beauty but the normal people are the ones who have the problem. Many times woman go to extreme measures to look their best, from tons of make-up, plastic surgery and even bleaching their skin to appear lighter

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and attain this societal level of beauty. This is becoming a problem, and as a black woman you should be proud of the way you look and not be ashamed just because you dont look like Miss America or a Victoria Secret model. We need to embrace our identity and take pride in who we are and not let society tell us who we should be or look like. In conclusion, deciding to follow societies rules just to fit in is a choice. As I got older I stopped following what everyone else is doing and I do my own thing. As long as youre confident in yourself what everyone else thinks shouldnt matter. Its time to take control and stop letting everything around you determine if youre beautiful or not, now is the time to be comfortable in the skin youre in.

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Works Cited America The Beautiful. Dir. Darryl Roberts. Sensory Overload Productions, 2008. DVD. Craig, Maxine Leeds. Ain't I a Beauty Queen?: Black Women, Beauty, and the Politics of Race. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002. Print. Ulmer, Constance. "NWSA Journal." ProQuest. Johns Hopkins University Press, 12 Mar. 2013. Web. 6 Nov. 2013.