Sometimes people astound me in bad ways. This morning was one of those times.
Someone posted a link about “Yellow Fever”: a short film that challenges beauty ideals around skin color. (You can see the film at the end of this post.) One commenter, a self-identified artist, claimed straight hair (particularly “golden locks”) is more attractive than kinky hair. He went on to say opposite things can’t be beautiful; it must be one or the other.
As a fellow artist I am floored by his narrow view of what beauty is. My reply to him follows:
Both things can be beautiful. Sunrise/sunset is beautiful. Black skies full of twinkling stars are beautiful. Bright blue skies with white clouds or no clouds at all are beautiful. We don’t say only one of those is beautiful, so there is no need to say only one type of hair or skin color is beautiful. Only when we narrow our definition of “beauty” can we not see that.
I’m surprised that as an artist you haven’t figured that out by now.
