swintons:

oumkhartoum | cynicalapathy:

i wish feminist would care about brown girls who bleach their skin as much as they care about white anorexic girls

That would mean our lives actually mattered to them and even wholly to ourselves. White girls suffering from anorexia as a result of misogyny in our society is a focal point of feminism. Countless organizations advocate for those women while completely ignoring women of colour and the complexities and intersections of our body image and mental health. Respecting women of colour who suffer from internalized racism enough to listen to them would mean analyzing Whiteness and we aren’t getting that in mainstream culture and media. Skin bleaching is one of the very many symptoms of Whiteness and only one manifestation of internalized racism. Our problems are not only ignored, but there is a counter campaign to prove the opposite is happening.

Internalized racism, shadeism and skin bleaching within the Asian continent and Asian diaspora is written off as simply a part of Asian culture that always has been, without any influence by European beauty ideals. Due to this denial, colonization of Asia and its effects on the mental health and bodies of women are ignored. From the high rates of depression to the use of dieting aids, eating disorders and the body dissatisfaction that leads to suicide in very high numbers.

Various white owned media outlets over the years have conducted false surveys and produced illegitimate statistics that claim Black women have extremely high self esteem and superiority complexes. If you type Black women highest into Google that is the first suggested search to come up. Not legitimate truths like Black women have highest rate of sexual violence committed onto them, or Black women have the highest rate of reproductive rights discrimination, but highest self esteem! A racist article written by Satoshi Kanazawa for Psychology Today said last year: “It is very interesting to note that even though black women are objectively less physically attractive than other women, black women (and men) subjectively consider themselves to be far more physically attractive than others.”

Taking into account the amount of negative things Black women are told about themselves every single day from every single direction, studies like Kanazawa’s and Glamour magazine claiming ‘Black women perceive themselves to be the most beautiful in the room’ directly contradicts the reality of internalized racism. They are attempting to justify the horrible way they make us feel as needing to put us in our place and kill the large ego that doesn’t even exist.

You can’t treat or even acknowledge the existence of symptoms of Whiteness such as internalized racism if you can’t accept their roots. White people denying what Whiteness has done to the way women of colour view and treat themselves is expected because they still believe European colonization of Asia, the Americas, Middle East, Australia and Africa in addition to genocides and enslavement didn’t happen as we know it did. Until they acknowledge history they will continue to recycle false notions about its effects.

(via formelyusako-deactivated2012090)