Will Women of Color Always Be Consumed?
My happy place is a fully stocked Sephora. Not a Sephora Inside JCPenney with its limited stock (#noshade) or a drugstore with six options of foundation for women like me. But I digress.
When I was a little brown biscuit with knobby knees and an uneven hairline, the world of makeup was fascinating. I loved watching my mother draw on thicker brows and powder her brown skin. As an adult armed with credit cards and a YouTube subscription, I could upgrade my mother's makeup bag to one of my own. The aisles of eyeliners, powders, and skin tone shades were at once mesmerizing and soothing. I fell in love with my dark complexion and developed a penchant for blinding highlights.
So it's safe to assume that you can find me, on direct deposit Fridays, swatching ultraviolet eyeshadows and on the never ending quest for a true match in foundation. Recently, one such adventure gave me pause as I noticed a consistent theme among many skin products: food.
Caramel, mocha, almond, truffle, cappuccino, praline etc. I noticed among a sea of beige, light beige, tan, nude, warm sands, and porcelains, that the deeper the shade of foundation, the more delectable they sounded. Before, I say more- I should probably note that the way society and culture devour women and femmes affects folks of all races and ethnicities. But for today's musings, I want to focus on my fellow women of color. Whenever I'm searching for the elusive perfect foundation shade, I begin in the almonds and caramels. Brands across all price ranges tend to put my brown skin in the sometimes healthy and nutritious almonds and hazelnut range. I can even venture into the darker truffles and dark chocolates. It seems that the deeper our complexion, the more delectable our skin.
Fascination with darker skin isn't new. My white counterparts layer on the bronzer and toast themselves with spf to add a golden hue to pale skin. Many of us can remember the scoldings of our family members to stay out of the sun lest we become too dark. So you can, most likely, relate to being puzzled by white folks racing to tanning beds, and bringing deeper foundation shades down their necks to mimics skin like ours. Roaming the makeup aisles is now accompanied by my furrowed (drawn on) brow. The more I melt foundations and concealers onto the backs of my hands in generous swatches, the more I think about how easy I am to consume.
I fit the aesthetic of Western beauty. My shaped eyebrows and contoured cheeks reflect the ads in glossy magazines and trending Instagram posts. I spend much time painting my hooded eyelids and shaping a smaller nose with the help of streaming tutorials and overpriced makeup sponges. I'm a consumer, and the products I buy help this brown body stay consumable.
As a young woman of color, I can recall the countless times I shrank in direct line of the male gaze. On sidewalks, subway platforms, grocery store lanes, and my own office, I'm familiar with the way my pretty privilege elicits favors, hugs that last too long, winks, lascivious stares, smiles, compliments, and commentary on a body that apparently does not belong to me. I know what you're thinking, how did Too Faced's foundation in shade Chai lead us to this conversation on the patriarchy and the insidious reach of global misogyny? Well. It makes sense to me, but just in case- here's a map:
Foundation shades -> Hard to find a match -> the quest continues -> my shades in ___ brand were warm almond, praline, or mocha so I'll check there first -> Chai! -> I could go for some chai -> Ugh so good -> Wait, why are these always food related? -> Am I trippin -> Goes to other brands -> Sees food related names for their foundations -> It's like you can order a WOC -> Wait, WOC ARE always on the menu -> *revelation*-> MISOGYNY
Hopefully that helped. Anyway, back to me. I've been thinking about this for some time. I think about my WOC friends who are Black and describe never feeling like a young girl. The way older men would lick their lips at their adolescent bodies and women would affix the label "fast" on them for looking older than they were. I remember the tweets I've scrolled through rehashing the way some women wear fake engagement rings to ward off leering epithets from men and boys alike. I remember my mother's fear when she held my sister and I close while strangers casually rubbed up against her on the 3 train. Or, the headlines of the brutal murders where women lost their lives after rejecting the advances of scorned men. We don't even know the names of the Trans women and Non-Binary femmes killed by men seeking bodies they lustfully are entitled to. There's so much more to say, to name and to dissect, but how do you whittle away a concept as large as a mountain? Perhaps, its macabre the way I've connected something as small as my foundation shade to the way women and femmes are treated in a world built on misogyny. But the again, isn't that how misogyny works?
