EURO IN US.
YASMINE AKIM, SHADES OF NOIR.
In a talk titled, ‘Are You Still a Slave? Liberating the Black Female Body’, (held at Eugene Lang College: New School) Bell Hooks opens the discussion by saying, ‘All my life I wanted to be free, In order to claim that freedom, I had to resist my parents I had to resist the imperialist, white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, every step of the way...’ For me freedom means being able to accept oneself without fear, resentment or judgment. I ended up straightening my hair as I was sick of being called ‘shit locks’ at school. My mother was aware of what was happening on a personal level, and was traumatized when she saw my hair for the first time, she always praised my hair and said that I was blessed – unfortunately I couldn’t see that at the time and felt as if she was holding me back. This is due to the fact that in the big bad world, I was literally bullied, called disgusting and gross for having twists in my hair. I instantly gained an abundance of male attention as soon as I did it, which was confusing. This rejection of self was especially damaging for me personally, as I felt frustrated and constantly objectified by taking this step to ‘beautify’ myself; Boys would grope and spank me in school and call me a Black Barbie or Back-off, I knew from that point that those boys wouldn’t of had the same sense of entitlement if I were white. As Nora Chipaumire put’s it - ‘Is my body subject? Or object?’ What about blackness vs. Africaness? Obviously, hair means different things for different people - it’s just that I felt as if it was something that I had to work through personally – and having a space to talk about this is hard, yet incredibly important for women of color. Subconsciously, I
was trying to look more white, this is something that people experience with skin bleaching – which is commonplace for the same issues related to acceptance. Even before I was bullied about my hair My personal experience of ‘not being good enough’ as a child happened subconsciously, for me this confusion started when I realised that I wasn’t as fond of my black doll because I thought that she wasn’t as beautiful as the others. This is my first memory of internalising racism; I challenged this response within myself when I got older but the first time it happened I was too innocent to realise what had been cast over me. To be frank, although my mother is highly intelligent and a woke, critical thinker herself, my father was incredibly racist towards Indians in the 90’s and was judgmental of black men even though he had lots of black friends loved black culture, and had a mixed race daughter. To be fair - He was in and out of prison when he was younger which had had a significant effect on the way that he depicted racial stereotypes, he told me that prisons are literally segregated in terms of race, and everyone of the same race has to stick together in fear of violence. Growing up, Scary Spice was a massive role model for me, and although all of the spice girls were highly sexualized - it was especially damaging that Mel B was seen as the ‘scary’ one. As a naïve girl, I perceived her image as being an outcast which was upsetting as I felt as if she represented me, I dressed up as her frequently and all I wanted to do was be seen as beautiful like everyone else.. It was frustrating because I
98 // BIOLOGICAL PIGMENT BIAS: PERSPECTIVES ON COLOURISM
