Jill Littlewood

If you haven’t thought about your skin color today it’s probably because you are light skinned and don’t have to. Your skin will not make you a target, or keep you in low wage employment, or hamper your chances of marriage. You will not be tempted to contribute to the multi-billion dollar global industry for skin lighteners, inevitably made with caustic, toxic chemicals.

This global industry is an artifact of the power of Western culture and its military might in world politics – “the sun never sets on the British Empire” was once a fact. Currently the sun never sets on American cultural influence – the most recent example being 150 teenagers who died in Korea at a Halloween festival. We export our culture everywhere and yet we, at home, are in turmoil over who can include themselves as true Americans – largely along racial lines, which are often color lines.

My project, Big Bad Beautiful Brown, attempts to address the legacy of Western domination expressed in the phenomenon of colorism – prejudices around skin color. I did nothing to earn the privilege of light skin but every day I benefit from it. Growing up I saw how this played out: in my high school the teenagers with the darkest skin were on the lowest tracks, where as all the White kids and light-skinned Black kids were on the upper tracks. Skin color is a function of one layer of melanin cells and has zero connection to intelligence or physical ability, character or ability at work – except that we make it so, by whose skin is considered higher status.

Big Bad Beautiful Brown is a collaborative book arts project: I made 200 books of brown cloth and paper and gave them to anyone who asked. I wanted to seed conversations and I am pleased some places that has happened. I am now working on my own brown books, this being a page from #42. To see the whole book go to YouTube: https://youtu.be/ vvyyjqPVal8

To see what other artists have done with the book they received look on Instagram: #bbbeautifulbrown

Brown Book #42 2022 23” x 11” Mixed media textile book NFS Littlewoodart@gmail.com www.littlewoodart.co