The Backlash of Blue Ivy Carter's "Black Beauty"?
Here are only a few of the comments I saw online:
Beyoncé really screwed up, having a baby by Jay-Z. His nose and lips are never going to look right on a girl.
Let’s pray Beyoncé’s genes kick in as B.I.C. gets older. All the money and talent in the world won’t take away from having Jay-Z’s features.
Nappy-headed kid. Wish Beyoncé had married a nice-looking man instead of Jay-Z.
The criticism of full lips, “nappy” hair, and wide noses in our communities is weighted. Some people would have you believe attractiveness is subjective, but the truth is our collective view of facial features is tangled in the web of racism. In our social imagination, European features set the standard for what’s beautiful, rendering broad noses and big lips ugly.
Writer Akiba Solomon also tackled the issue in her article for Colorlines, “On Baby Blue Ivy Carter and the Alleged Ugliness of Blackness.” She writes:
I knew if indulged in even a smidgen more about this little girl, I’d find myself walking among stunted souls who traffic in the idea that the full lips, large eyes, broad nose, and dark brown skin of a Jay-Z is inherently ugly [...] I hope, in our media-saturated, appearance-obsessed society that is still so wounded by white supremacist aesthetics, baby Blue will find peace and joy in the simple act of living, no matter what she looks like.
Demetria Lucas echoed Solomon’s sentiments in a piece on Essence.com, “Real Talk: Do We Believe All Black Is Beautiful?”:
If some of us are very honest, we’ll acknowledge that there are only certain “black” physical features that we as a collective find attractive. Curves? A blessing and curse. Full lips? Eh … depends on how full. Broad nose? On women, not at all. On men? Some get a pass, but not Jay-Z. Kinky hair? Not so much. There’s a reason most black women “prefer” perms, and even a lot of natural girls spend an inordinate amount of time and product trying to reconfigure their coils into curls.
It’s fair that some people simply don’t view Jay-Z as handsome. But when the public excoriates a baby for developing potentially “black” features, it’s our self-hatred that’s rearing its ugly head.
Do you think your opinion of what is "beautiful" to you is due to possibly being conditioned to see it from the European standard?
Edited at 2012-07-22 09:26 am (UTC)
jay-z is not cute so this is not a surprise.
I'm not the type to fawn over babies but I'm certainly not hateful.
cumberbatch is ugly, with that weak chin, and small shark eyes, jay z is just normal.
it's like ontd is perpetually blind (or drunk) when it comes to men
Edited at 2012-07-21 04:23 pm (UTC)
If we're gonna talk about ugly LET'S BE HONEST.
Jay Z has a normal face, it may not be attractive to everyone but it is what it is.
BC is someone people would have studied in Victorian times in a cage.
Unlike Cumberbatch, who exists in a void free of everything, especially sex appeal.
that said, I have a hard time seeing how his features could work on a full-grown woman. blue is really too little to tell which one her parents she looks like yet but I think she's a damn cute bb.
I'm gonna have to remember that, that's very spot on.
cutie pie tbh.
But is he good looking? no
and ita, cumberbatch is fucking hideous!
I don't find Jay-Z attractive. But that baby girl is adorable and frankly, anyone who bitches about the attractiveness of a seven month old girl has some deeper fucking issues
And IA.
Edited at 2012-07-21 04:18 pm (UTC)
This backlash has been in effect for a couple of years now and I remember several (predictable members') comments about how Jay's face would fuck her up.
It's like that Kate Upton post where everyone was all "HOW DARE THEY CALL HER FAT"
um you do that everyday so...
ONTD is so good at hypocrisy in the face of terror.
Plus, she's fucking adorable. Fuck "standards".
end of story.
lmao idg these kind of comments.
Anyway, I believe beauty is subjective.
Like, up thread Benedict Cumberpatch was mentioned, and all the Sherlock gifs were so freaky to me because of his face until I actually watched the show, and me loving the character totally changed my mind and as Sherlock he's beautiful to me now.
And on the flip side, when I find out a good-looking celeb has done something horrible, they look ugly to me. Like his co-star being a racist shit. I always found that actor so cute but after reading his comments he looks rat-like to me now.
Let it go. Stop being a bully. This is not even a story.
it's a sad world we live in.
But come on there are for sure ugly babies out there.
I mean, white people get to claim they're half French and half Scottish, or half Persian and half sth else ALL the time, why is it bad if black people claim theirs? I saw Bey getting shit on somewhere else for claiming her part French ancestry, lbr if some white celeb said they were part European they would never be criticised the way she was.
black features=ugly smh
Edited at 2012-07-21 04:59 pm (UTC)
Once I saw a talk-show who had a shrink as a guest. She said that what is familiar to us is what we find more easily beautiful. I think that the more you are in contact with people of other ethnicities, the more you are likely to find them attractive.
minorities seem to have this impossible physical standard in order to be famous in the u.s.
it seems.
like you would never see a hispanic as unattractive as say Kate Winslet get as far as Kate has.