hey, i'm a brown-skinned black woman and generally agree with your point, but wanted to point out that most afterellen readers would definitely know that jennifer beals is of color. beth, her character on the l-word & her main entry into the afterellen world, is quite "out" about her blackness. ossie davis even played her dad, one of his last roles, and pam grier plays her sister :)

that said, we could stand a little more love for dark-skinned women and thicker women and smart women and....

I'm glad I'm not the only one that noticed this.

Basically, they're saying that the only Black women who are attractive are those who look like White women.

Sadly, a lot of the Black men's magazines aren't much better - lately, they've been running light skinned Latinas and even White women on the covers of their magazines, thus putting out the noxious and false idea that even Black men think that White women are prettier than our women!

One publication, Black Men Magazine, actually retouches the pictures of it's Black models to make them look lightskinned!

For instance, when they run pictures of women like Angel Melaku, Buffie Carruth or Avonte Write (all dark skinned Black swimsuit models who are well known in the "ethnic" modeling world) they will "whiten up" their pictures.

This is pretty glaringly noticable for those who have seen photos of these women in other venues that show their actual complexions!

Now, I can understand why media outlets aimed at White men or White lesbian women might feel the need to only show very lightskinned Black women - it's pathetic, but I can understand it.

But why do Black publications feel the need to privilige lightskinned Black, lightskinned Latina or White models over darkskinned Black models?

That's just sad...

Self hatred lives...

GREGORY A. BUTLER

wow. This is a subject me and my girlfriend have talked about before. I agree with Gregory about understanding why it's done in magazines that are geared toward whites. I will never understand why it's done in magazines geared toward blacks in this day and age. I was flipping through a Black Men Magazine earlier this week and noticed that "light skinned standard of beauty". i could not find one dark-skinned model. NOT ONE!! It irritates me to see that done. I've also noticed that it seems a lot easier for a dark skinned male to be considered handsome than it is for a dark skinned female to be considered beautiful in our society. I mean really think about. There was a shift in the 1990's when light skinned men were considered "played out" and dark skinned men were "in style". what was up with that?! That was frustrating to here and see that done.It's as if women decided to make a fashion statement with skin color. So I was questioning whether women found interest in dark skinned guys because of there vision of beauty or because it was the "in thing to do".So would guys find Keisha Cole prettier than Lauryn Hill because she is light skinned? Is that all it takes to be a beautiful black woman? So is a handsome black guy one of darker skin?

Another "interesting article" as these yahoos still have not figured out what Hitler and Manson already figured out -

without the "black", the "white" will cease to exist.

But I am not angry, as the "black male" I was married to hated his own black flesh enough to say to me (a black woman and mother of his black sons): "Cicely Tyson is ugly."

Since when?

Maybe you can do a blog about "Handkerchief Heads" and the typical "St. Louis Jimmy". (Not the musician.)

The trump card for the oppressor, is the "mind" of the oppressed.

If darker skinned people of any society felt truly good about themselves, it would not matter what a lighter skinned person thought. It is the internalization of inferiority that empowers them.

I know black men who have told me that their own mothers said "don't bring no dark skinned woman home" to which one friend replied, "you mean like you, Mom? It's deep. And this society is not the only one suffering from this "mental illness". It becomes an "illness", when it affects choices you make in life that can be destructive to your self and others. "Blackness" is associated with everything negative;, poverty, ignorance, sexual promiscuity, violence and the lack of motivation, and you bring nothing to the table. It can be overcome though. The human mind is fickle. There is a "deliberate" demonization of
black people in American media, the decree is: focus on the negative, always...that which is positive, should be treated as
rare, or occasional.

It's a psych game. The group that controls the images seen daily, knows the power of repeated information. They decide, who's smart, who's pretty, who get's paid. So they think. This only works if the public, is not savvy enough to know the game or to know themselves.