Regardless of your sexual preference or the beauty aesthetic you bend toward, the woman captured in this picture is very likely to make you feel something good on sight. Even the most stoic human being has emotional reflexes popping and pinging around inside of them constantly, whether or not they demonstrate those emotions to others. And it is a pretty safe bet that when human eyes land on this woman, the natural responses she evokes are anything but negative.
The intensity of the emotions will certainly vary by the beholder, but a rejection reflex is off the table, barring some level of mental impairment. Why then, are we always calling this woman and women who look like her, ugly? Evidently we are all laboring under some level of mental impairment.
As humans have evolved, we have built up so many political and social filters between our eyes and our minds that by the time we generate an audible response to a visual stimulus, it has been well calibrated for social acceptability. That is the only way to explain how we can ever assign an ugly label like “dark” to a woman that looks like this. It is our social custom to call her that. And it is time for that custom to change.
Despite the fact that there is nothing about this woman’s image that triggers negative emotions (not counting the well-founded envy of many) we have made it a practice to use the word “dark” to describe her. And in the language we speak, besides being a lazy description of her skin tone, “dark” also means all of the following:
“Characterized by tragedy, unhappiness, or unpleasantness, as in “the dark days of the war;” Gloomily pessimistic, as in “a dark vision of the future;” Suggestive of or arising from evil characteristics or forces; Sinister, as in “so many dark deeds had been committed”; And for the history buffs out there who like to go all the way back, dark also originally meant “ignorant and unenlightened, as in “he is dark on certain points of scripture.”
What is most unfortunate about this list is that I could go on and on. And then go some more. And had I done so until I finally exhausted all of the definitions and synonyms for “dark” in our common parlance, I would have reached forty six different descriptions. And not a single one of them reflects positivity. None reflects virtue. None reflects beauty. About a quarter of them are relatively benign, but all of those that speak to the characteristics of a human being or to descriptions of our collective states of being, are exclusively and deeply negative. Frighteningly so. The fact that we splatter all that negativity over such beauty is not just a crime against these women, it is truly an act of self-harm. Repeating ugliness like this on a loop does to the soul what we discovered cigarettes do to the body. Slow and steady poisoning until the host is degraded to the point of dysfunction.
Do we actually believe that we can refer to people repeatedly across many eras and generations in such overtly false and unflattering terms without the health of our own subconscious mind being compromised? And doesn’t it follow that such a compromised subconscious mind suppresses the quality of our own humanity? How high can you fly when you are weighted down with such heavy lies? And doesn’t it follow that the lower our own quality of humanity is the more prone we are to abuse and mistreat other people?
If we can follow this chain of basic human truths, wouldn’t we be kidding ourselves if we still maintained that it is a harmless quirk of language to insist on calling people “dark?” And if we are not kidding ourselves, we are doubly damned because that suggests that we are too mentally lazy to challenge ourselves to be better people; or worse still, that we actually enjoy putting somebody down just for the hell of it.
My primary objective in raising this issue (yet again) is the eradication of any and all negative associations assigned to this woman and women like her on the basis of their complexion.
The idea that said eradication would also serve as a force multiplier for good by making all of us a better brand of human is the sugar-on-top selling point. Why not be better humans when it is well within our power to be? Especially when it costs us so very little to achieve so much? This woman has skin that is very rich in melanin. That richness describes her complexion as accurately as darkness does, and richness carries none of the historical burdens or cultural baggage. In fact the linguistic vibe is the polar opposite. ‘Rich’ has fifty one definitions or synonyms and nearly all of the descriptives are positive. If we can say ‘LGBTQ’ instead of ‘gay,’ we can say rich instead of dark.
The LGBTQ community in particular did the country a big favor by pushing us to upgrade our language in the current context. At their insistence, we demonstrated both the will and the skill to adjust our language to elevate our collective conversation. Who can dispute that our national dialogue was improved when we changed the way we refer to the sexuality and nationality of our fellow citizens in a manner that honors them rather than alienates them? The controversies surrounding those changes were all intentionally overblown by the click-bait-bots of the outrage machine. The truth is that people can adjust their language in a short time with very little effort if they are so inclined. This is especially true when the insulting language was wholly unintentional.
Most people meant no harm in referring to homosexual men as ‘fags’ or homosexual women as ‘dykes’ during the last millennium. Way back in the day old men like my granddad used the terms ‘Chinaman’ or ‘Negro’ or ‘Chicano’ because that was all they knew. They never thought much about it, but once invited to give the matter some consideration, the pivot to Asian, Black and Latino as default terms was easy. With better language options presented, those old-school gay slurs were relegated to the status of a punchline or an invitation to a punch in the mouth.
We can and we must do the same for women like our lovely cover-model, who have been demeaned by our language default settings their whole lives. I have no doubt that she is aware of her beauty now, but her journey to that knowledge was a much rockier road than it had any business being. I don’t have to know her or the details of her life to say that with confidence. Because I know the rest of us; and even when we are not trying to be insulting or dismissive, we go there anyway just by describing her as being “dark.”
For those of you wondering why I have framed this discussion specifically around gender this time around, I respond to that question with a question: Have you ever heard a man describe his ideal female paramour as ‘tall, dark and pretty,’ with the same conviction as a woman openly expressing her desire for a man who is ‘tall, dark and handsome?’
That is doubtful, subject to one major caveat: If you happen to be a woman who meets this description yourself, then yes you have heard this. But keep in mind that at the moment you heard it, the man speaking it to you was shooting his shot and desperately hoping for a chance to study that little tattoo on your back up close before the night is over.
And since you know there is virtually nothing a man won’t say when we are hot on the panty-campaign trail, you also know to take his statement with a grain of salt the size of a cue ball. So, to anyone other than a woman matching this description who has heard a man say this, run out and buy a lottery ticket right away because you clearly have a knack for finding that needle in a haystack.
That is not to suggest that men are not attracted to women with the rich complexion of our cover model (who is Emmy nominated actress Deborah Ayorinde, by the way). Of course they are, in fact women sharing her hue may be the only members of society who are acutely aware of that attraction. But how many men idealize her brand of beauty and seek it out above all others as a matter of pure preference? Not fetishization, which is its own unique brand of degradation, but solely out of uncomplicated appreciation. I don’t think we really want to know that answer because I suspect it will be depressing. Centuries of brainwashing is a bitch to reverse.
If that question did not explain the gender divide here, I will give it one more shot: Who is the Black woman counterpart to Idris Elba? Idris is, of course, the movie star who reigns as the regal voice and the ladies’ choice in every corner of the world. And he is (wait for it) tall, dark and handsome.
I am glad he occupies the space he does because I maintain it is healthy for the culture. But who is the sister who shares his complexion and also enjoys the same universal acclaim for being beautiful? There are so many White actresses who fit the bill, you could fill up this page with just the ones named Jennifer. And while there are many Black women who qualify, they don’t get the big prize and everything that comes with it.
Let me be clear: I begrudge Beyoncé, Rihanna and Halle Berry nothing. They deserve every bit of the attention they get. But none of them are as melanated as brother Idris and we need to make room at the top for Black women that are. And while that might be a complicated and protracted mission, here is one that’s not and this is where we start:
Stop calling them “dark.”
This post originally appeared on Medium and is edited and republished with author's permission. Read more of David Saint Vincent's work on Medium.