"A Girl Like Me"
This is a video that Professor Tara Affolter of the Education Studies Department showed in my Education in the United States class today. It focuses on the beauty standards that have been specifically created for black girls, including the notion that lighter skin is more beautiful and that black women must straighten their hair to conform to Eurocentric ideas of beauty. Though all women in the United States and in Western cultures face unrealistic standards of beauty, Women of Color are especially affected due to the colors of their skin, and there is immense pressure to engage in sometimes harmful procedures such as skin bleaching in order to be considered "beautiful."
This video also references the doll experiments conducted by Kenneth and Mamie Clark, which were used in the Brown v. Board of Education case to show the negative psychological effects of segregation. After watching this video, it becomes clear that black children are still internalizing negative messages about their skin colors in a way that white children never experience.
This is a very worthwhile watch; it is only a few minutes long, but touches on some effects of living in a racialized society that those of us who are white may never have considered.