By the beauty myth, I mean the idea that for a black woman to be considered beautiful, she must wear fake hair. These days, the trend is Brazilian hair. Past fads have included Russian, Indian and Peruvian hair. And for those who cannot afford human hair, there is always the synthetic option. No matter the choice, as long as a black woman is wearing fake hair that has either been glued or sewn onto her own hair, she passes the beauty yardstick. Aside from the fake hair, the beauty myth also says that long acrylic nails and long fake eyelashes are a must. And when I say long, I mean long. For both nails and eyelashes. Some even go as far as having long toenails! As if all this is not bad enough, some black women (and surprisingly some black men too) have fallen for the beauty myth that the lighter the skin, the more beautiful the person.

To get this light skin they so desire, dark-skinned people bleach their skin with dangerous chemicals that are known to cause cancer. With all this fakery and skin bleaching, today’s black woman is looking far from black! And this concerns me. You see, each race was created with our own unique features. And one of our features as black people is our kind of hair. The black race is the only one whose hair grows upwards. If we want our hair to flow down naturally, we can plait, twist or lock it. Another option is to hot comb it. Otherwise, the only way we can get our hair to flow down is by chemically straightening it. Incidentally, the chemicals in hair relaxers have also been known to be the cause of cancer in some black women. With regards to our skin colour we come in all shades of black. Whilst some of us are very dark-skinned others are very light-skinned, not forgetting the countless shades in-between. Despite this and for a very long time, black people have been made to feel having light skin and fine straight hair will make them more attractive and also be considered more appropriate to fit into the workplace. To be continued.