Forty-three years ago, when I was four, I had a friend from nursery school named Debbie. She was white and most significantly, had long brown hair. I was (and still am) African American with very curly hair that my mother painstakingly brushed each day into one or two twisted ponytails that she secured with an elastic band. And on the days I spent playing at Debbie’s house, I invariably unloosed the ponytails hoping that I too might have long, swingy hair that bounced down my back and blew wildly behind me as I ran. Though I doubt my hair actually moved very much, I believed that it did, mostly because I really wanted it to. By the time my mother picked me up, my hair was a rather large (and how I see it now, lovely) cloud. She would grit her teeth, probably embarrassed that I looked a bit like a banshee, and scold me for taking my hair out.
What I didn’t know then that I do now is that she was probably heartbroken that I wanted my hair to be like Debbie’s and that at just four years old, I had somehow determined that her hair was more desirable than my own.
How does this happen? I couldn’t have said for sure until recently when my own four-year-old daughter not only expressed a desire for her hair to be long and straight but once said she wishes she was white and that she doesn’t think dark brown skin is pretty. My God! I immediately felt guilty and like I had somehow failed her. Since she was born, my husband (who is also African American) and I have been very thoughtful about the images she’s been exposed to. We’ve intentionally purchased dolls of color, read books about children and families of color, and stayed as far away as we possibly could from images that perpetuate beauty as a reflection of a so-called standard. Things were just fine until two things happened: She started attending a nursery school where she’s the only African American, and she was introduced to the insidious effect of Disney princesses.
My daughter is very social. She loves playing with other children, especially girls. She has a big heart and truly appreciates the joy of friendship. I don’t think she understands how and why she’s different from her classmates – but I do think she has a vague sense that she’s the minority, which confuses her. Her remedy, so she can manage that feeling of “otherness,” is to wish to be like her friends. She’s too young right now to revel in being different, but I hope she will as she gets older, especially if we stay in this community.
On some level, the school experience is almost understandable. My daughter’s day-to-day life involves seeing very few people of color, which means her worldview is significantly shaped by images of her white peers and neighbors. We try to buttress this by making sure she spends time with family and other children of color. I belong to a national organization called Mocha Moms, which is a support group for mothers of color, and my daughter plays with the children of these moms as often as possible. But our group is spread out over a very large area and often the events (playgroups or family outings) are at least an hour away and we aren’t able to attend. I do find great comfort in sharing my concerns with my Mocha Moms sisters who also struggle with how to protect their children from being victimized by a culture that doesn’t promote enough variation in the images of what is desirable.
The Disney princess images are much harder to reconcile. To begin with, they’re everywhere. Despite our best efforts to avoid them entirely, they seeped into our home after we allowed our daughter to watch The Princess and the Frog. Initially, she loved Tiana, the African American heroine, but after watching the DVD a few times and noticing trailers for other princess movies, she became smitten with the whole fairytale/princess world. And what’s disconcerting about those stories is not only how completely white they are, but how they project a singular image of beauty as the norm. I admit that I was in denial about how much my daughter was being affected by these messages until she started openly rejecting Tiana (claiming that she no longer liked her dress) and saying she now preferred Cinderella and Snow White. As a result, I’ve made the hard decision to again limit her exposure to movies and stories that don’t promote diversity.
It’s hard for me to believe that in the 43 years since I was four, not much has changed in terms of how we project what beauty is to young girls. Other than the Happily Ever After series on HBO, which features remakes of fairytales with characters of color, the only mainstream children’s television show about an African American child and his family is Little Bill, which is no longer in production. As far as I know, there is not a single children’s show centered around an African American girl (and if I’m wrong, please tell me!). Our community waited with baited breath for The Princess and the Frog and I’m grateful that Tiana has been embraced by princess-loving girls everywhere. I am ridiculously happy when I see a white little girl wearing a shirt or carrying a backpack bearing Tiana’s image.
My daughter is beautiful not because she’s African American but because she just is. I want for her to love herself and to know that her perception of who she is should never been based on anyone else’s definition of what is and isn’t desirable. I often feel like I’m David trying to slay the Goliath that is our culture’s propensity to hold white beauty as the standard, but I won’t give up and will do everything I can to give my daughter enough self-confidence to be able to define her own vision of herself that allows her to be secure, happy and comfortable in her own skin.