{"id":55670,"date":"2018-02-11T04:32:16","date_gmt":"2018-02-11T04:32:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=55670"},"modified":"2018-02-11T06:06:45","modified_gmt":"2018-02-11T06:06:45","slug":"when-it-comes-to-diversity-the-fashion-and-beauty-industry-are-the-absolute-worst","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=55670","title":{"rendered":"When It Comes To Diversity, The Fashion and Beauty Industry Are The Absolute Worst"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/@nilegirl\/when-it-comes-to-diversity-the-fashion-and-beauty-industry-are-the-absolute-worst-5de3bc234bdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em><strong>When It Comes To Diversity, The Fashion and Beauty Industry Are The Absolute Worst<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Medium<\/a><br \/>\n2018-02-09<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/ezinneukoha.com\/\"><strong>Ezinne Ukoha<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/@nilegirl\/when-it-comes-to-diversity-the-fashion-and-beauty-industry-are-the-absolute-worst-5de3bc234bdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn-images-1.medium.com\/max\/1600\/1*3I7zrTeB7AsWNfvkTwk8BA.png\" width=\"550\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<small>These are some of the top fashion magazine covers of 2017<\/small><\/p>\n<p><em>Including the sexy magazines that can\u2019t stand dark-skinned models with puffy hair<\/em><\/p>\n<p>As a child\u200a\u2014\u200aI endured the casual comments from family friends who couldn\u2019t help expressing how much I looked like my mother with the exception of her lighter skin\u200a\u2014\u200awhich I unfortunately didn\u2019t inherit. This practice of exaggerating how my dark-skin didn\u2019t measure up continued with my boarding school mates\u200a\u2014\u200awho once compared my looks to one of the popular girls\u200a\u2014\u200aand concluded that even though we looked alike\u200a\u2014\u200ashe was prettier.<\/p>\n<p>We did sort of resemble each other\u200a\u2014\u200abut she wasn\u2019t prettier. She was just light-skinned. That same rhetoric was responsible for the infatuation and fascination assigned to the biracial students who almost always won beauty competitions and anything else that required the adulation of their prized features.<\/p>\n<p>Interestingly enough\u200a\u2014\u200aI never pressured myself into sourcing ways to solve the issue of my dark skin\u200a\u2014\u200athe way other Nigerian women have resolved to do\u200a\u2014\u200aat the risk of their health. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=17206\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Skin bleaching<\/a> was a dirty secret when I was growing up\u200a\u2014\u200abecause even though it was glaringly obvious that Mrs. Kalu was indulging in potent solutions that couldn\u2019t quite penetrate her knuckles, elbows or feet\u200a\u2014\u200awe had to act as if her new complexion wasn\u2019t weird as fuck.<\/p>\n<p>My mother did an excellent job boosting my ego\u200a\u2014\u200aand as a result there was hardly a time when I stared at the mirror and imagined how much more desirable I would be if the gods had been a little more miserly with the strokes of deep chocolate.<\/p>\n<p>However\u200a\u2014\u200awhen I moved to the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/United_States\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">States<\/a> to pursue my college degree\u200a\u2014\u200aI was greeted with hard truths of what it means to be a \u201cregular Black girl\u201d\u200a\u2014\u200aduring an era when such a disposition was guaranteed to get you nowhere\u200a\u2014\u200aespecially in industries that catered to fashion and entertainment&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/@nilegirl\/when-it-comes-to-diversity-the-fashion-and-beauty-industry-are-the-absolute-worst-5de3bc234bdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Including the sexy magazines that can\u2019t stand dark-skinned models with puffy hair<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,8413,8,20],"tags":[240,27998,18537],"class_list":["post-55670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-communications","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-colorism","tag-ezinne-ukoha","tag-medium"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55670"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55670\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55677,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55670\/revisions\/55677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}