OPERATIVE BLACK BEAUTY

I've decided I'll post beautiful images of black people, mostly black females, no matter who creates them. I wanted to limit my findings to black artists. But sometimes I find something done by a non-black artist / a non-brown artist that takes my breathe away.

I've decided this and undecided this a number of times. But I loved this piece so much, that the final decision has finally been made.

This portrait was done by a white guy whose profession is doing artwork for video games.  Whatever pays the rent, I suppose. But I hope Aaron Griffin continues doing stuff like this too because I adore this. 

read more: 
http://aarongriffinart.com/about/


All kinds of art, including the black female as art, inspires me. But I am especially interested in showcasing art that features little black girls in active play instead of sitting around looking beautiful 

Of course, I love photography, paintings, and posters or cute little black girls being cute as much as the next person. But I want to see a lot less sitting around being beautiful.

It's the sitting around that bothers me. It's the inactive just sitting pretty that bothers me. So, I want to see more art centered on black girl doing instead of black girl observed.  

And I want this even though black beauty is in short supply in museums and art galleries, I want art that culturally educates and inspires black people, especially young black girls.

Girls are rarely active in photos and art like boys are. To me that means a chunk of cultural education is missing in art for girls.  

Visions and plans are not being seeded for them like they are for boys.  

Think about it, boys see boys and men they aspire to be in artwork going fishing. They see boys in artwork playing baseball and racing go-carts, even if they live in area where there isn't a place to play baseball and race go-carts   

More than that, I think it's important that black girls see art that tells them they are valued for something than being beautiful...like the image at the top of this post tends to do.

There's nothing wrong with the image above. Again, I love it. It just bothers me that there's so little artwork to compliment it, artwork that shows girls and women girls aspire to be in action.

There are so many messages saying that a woman's beauty if the most important thing about her.  Even feminists work on body image about widening the definition of beauty to include curvier women seems unbalanced to me.

I want beauty standards widened, of course. But there's so much talk of women and beauty even among feminists that it's a little frightening.  In feminist spaces on social media discussions of what is and isn't beautiful takes too much precedence over what black women are saying and doing

I know that's because black women are so absent from television, movies, museums, and art galleries. We just don't get to see ourselves. And, as women, most of us like to adorn ourselves and be pretty. I do. I still love playing in my make-up.

But your women work so hard to move toward beauty. It's seems like a lot of young women, feminist and non-feminist alike,  think the key to everything they want in life is being attractive to men or other women. 

For someone like Beyonce, maybe that's been 80% of her success in life. Maybe her talent goes nowhere without that beauty. For others, like Melania Trump --considered beautiful in some circles-- her beauty  is a source of hell on earth no matter how much money she's siphoned off President Hellhound.

Still, it's not that I don't think beauty brings joy.

A painting of the milky way or a flower can make something inside you feel free. And adorning your face and hair can make you feel all is well in the world for a minute or two. This means all beauty is important. 

However I also think idolizing beauty in others is damaging.

The cultural icons we consider "beautiful" for the most part are, instead of beautiful, mostly confident and charismatic or popular.  That is, most of the people deemed "beautiful" are mostly pretty average. 

If you look at yearbook after yearbook after yearbook, going back decades you will find that those voted "the most beautiful" usually looked like ordinary human beings compared to the class.

Look at these photos of Zendaya, with and without makeup. She's extremely plain. With make up she is average. 

But if you look at photo after photo of her, most people will see her as beautiful because she behaves as if she's beautiful. 

 And her beautiful behavior is coming from her belief that she is beautiful.

This means the average woman can beautiful too doesn't it?

If every woman can be beautiful if she believes it, then women who behave as if they are beautiful without hours worth of make-up and hair work must have the most powerful minds on the planet. Only a powerful mind can hold onto enough confidence to project charisma no matter what she objectively looks like, right?

TIFFANY HADDISH

I saw GIRLS TRIP twice and loved Tiffany Haddish's character to death.  Eventually I saw an interview, a long one, on THE BREAKFAST CLUB" where she discussed always being told she was beautiful.I was surprised by this. I guess I'd thought of all of the women in GIRLS TRIP as "attractive" But I hadn't really thought of Haddish as particularly "beautiful." I was surprised many people had told her that she is.

Since then I've seen her behaving as if she's beautiful. 

(Tiffany Haddish: GIRLS TRIP, THE CARMICHAELS)

And now I see how beautiful she is too.

So what if 90% of personal beauty is simply a matter of believing you are beautiful and leading other people to believe it too?

What if a lot less work on hair, clothes, and make-up is required to feel good about your outsides if your insides are strong and confident?

What if art, television, and movies, and black websites that only feature black women looking beautiful instead of black women doing are selling black girls and young black women the idea that their primary duty is to look good so that someone will come along and take care of them?

Despite my love of fashion, hair, make-up, feeling sexy, all things girlie and the fact that I identify with the fighting f*cktoy character whenever I go to see superhero movies too, I would like girls to see some of these things as adornment and fun, accessorizing what's already lovely about them rather than as a cover-up or a uniform they must adorn to be acceptable in society. 

That's only possible with confidence. 

Confidence comes from doing and being good at stuff

Girls begin to be confident and good at stuff when they are active at play.

Black art featuring little girls doing should plant the seed that great women do. Great women do not sit around being pretty even if they are naturally pretty sans much adornment at all

I ain't gonna lie though. Life isn't all sunshine, roses, and fairness. For a woman being pretty,  adorned or unadorned, increases confidence in the self and greases the wheels with others in a world dominated by male supremacy (patriarchy). 

But using sexual objectification as a weapon in your arsenal is one that backfires and blows up in a woman's hand way too often. There's no telling what a woman will attract or what she will be attracted to and become emotionally dependent on.

Furthermore, there's no telling what that attraction will wind up teaching her daughter.

You remind me of my father, a magician ... able to exist in two places at once. In the tradition of men in my blood, you come home at 3 a.m. and lie to me. What are you hiding?

The past and the future merge to meet us here. What luck. What a f**king curse.

~LEMONADE

http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/jay-zs-444-album-full-breakdown-track/story?id=48372354

I imagine when the world is full of art featuring black girls at play, featuring black girls in action you will have a world full of black girls who will grow to be black women who won 't tolerate sitting around trying to be beautiful all the time.

I imagine a world of black women who will take action and be loud and proud enough to shake things up enough 

... to be fulfilled 

... to have purpose that serves others

... to demand reciprocity from others

 ... to be attractive to others in deeper, more lasting way