For years, minority groups, academics and feminists have warned the public about how insidious and destructive white beauty standards are to non-white people, especially strong, independent women of color. They are now taking their insightful analysis of race one step further saying that beautiful white people are racist because they perpetuate harmful white beauty standards.
“White beauty standards permeate every aspect of American media and indeed life itself,” said Rebecca Balle, a writer for several feminist blogs. “We see it in film, TV, commercials, and advertising. We even see the racism of white beauty standards in products as benign as light-colored leggings for women. It’s inescapable.”
“It’s the perfect, slim noses; beautiful locks of straight blonde hair; arresting big blue eyes; and that creamy smooth skin every brown person loves to hate,” stated MTV Decoded producer Kashayla Brown. “These traits are hurtful and exclusionary to POCs. Being a beautiful white person is dangerous for non-whites who could never live up to these impossible expectations.”
Ms Brown stated that white beauty standards are so normalized and pervasive that beautiful white people are not even aware that they’re beautiful. “Let me be crystal clear,” she said, “the simple act of being white and beautiful is perpetuating white beauty standards and that is racist.”
Ms Balle has created a set of workshops targeted at beautiful white people on how to make themselves less attractive and decrease the harm that their beauty has on black and brown people. Some of the helpful topics covered by the workshops include, “There’s no shame in scarification,” “How to cleanly break your own nose” and “The safe way to tattoo your eyes black.”
“It’s all about education,” Ms Balle stated. “Beautiful white people need to be aware that their existence is racist, but these workshops were created to offer them ways of mitigating the negative effects of their white beauty.”