“White Means Beautiful”: The Effects ofWhite Beauty Standards on AfricanAmerican and African CommunitiesEmmanuelle Lajoie, McGill University

1. Introduction

“White means beautiful”. That is what a Ghana-ian woman told the researcher when she asked herwhy she was regularly bleaching her skin (Pierre,2008). Skin bleaching, eyelid surgery or nose re-construction are all practices that demonstratehow white beauty standards have been affectingother racial groups. One main problem regardingwhite beauty standards is that they are often con-sidered “international”, thus denying the fact thatsome racial groups have a greater chance thanothers to embody them (Balogun, 2012). Blackpeople are the most likely to be excluded fromthe Eurocentric beauty standards (and thus per-ceived as ugly) since historically, these standardswere established in order to devalue blacknessand justify slavery (Keith, 2009). This exclusionfrom white beauty standards falls more heavilyon Black women than Black men, since femininityhas always been closely tied to beauty (Rocamora,2011). Because of globalized cultures and commu-nications, black communities in Africa that wereinfrequently exposed to these standards now en-counter them on a daily basis (Glenn, 2009). Theimpact of white beauty standards on Black womenare mediated by the environment they live in.

For instance, African Americans constitute avisible minority in the United States, whereas inmost African countries Black citizens constitutean overall majority. Furthermore, proportionally,there are more African Americans of lower socioe-conomic status than Whites (Lin & Harris, 2008)

which cannot be measured within African coun-tries where Blacks represent the majority of thepopulation. In addition, in many African coun-tries, the State and some important institutionsthat influence beauty standards (such as beautymagazines or fashion industries) are no longer runby White colonizers. With this information inmind, the question remains: are Black Americanand African women similarly affected by Eurocen-tric beauty standards, despite the fact that theylive in different racial and social contexts?

In this paper, I will examine this question byfirst doing a short literature review on the historyof black beauty and will look at current researchon the subject. I will then critically examine sixblack beauty blogs and report the quantitative andqualitative results. I will finish by discussing thefindings of the blogs in relation with the literaturereview.

2. Literature Review

The devaluation of black beauty is a long histori-cal process that started at the time of slavery andcolonization. In order to justify the enslavementof Blacks and other racial groups, Europeans es-tablished a racial hierarchy as well as colorism(Hunter, 1998). Racial hierarchy is an ideologydeveloped around the idea that certain races are in-herently superior to others (Wallis & Fleras, 2009).As expected, Whites put themselves at the top ofthe stratification while they placed Blacks at thebottom. Whites were said to be naturally civilized,

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intelligent and moral, while Blacks were animal-like, dishonest and (sexually) depraved (Keith,2009). In terms of physical appearances, phe-notype and body features which were associatedwith Whites were presented as beautiful, in oppo-sition with the black “ugliness” (Tate, 2007; Keith,2009). For instance, the more voluptuous curvesof Blacks and their bigger bottom were said tobe similar to the one of baboons and monkeys(Solly, 1985). Blacks slaves that had white facialfeatures or straight hair were also portrayed assuperior and were given certain advantages overtheir more African-looking mates (Patton, 2006).Colorism complemented this racial hierarchy byadvocating that people who had light skin weresuperior to people with darker skin (Lewis, 2011).Colonizers favoured light skinned Blacks by em-ploying them as domestic workers or giving themthe higher title of overseer (Keith, 2009). Lightskinned Blacks were also more likely to becomefree slaves, which permitted them to start smallbusinesses and over time acquire a higher economicstatus than dark skinned Blacks (Telles, 2009). InAfrica, the patterns were very similar: during col-onization, Europeans associated themselves withBlacks that had lighter skin or a similar morphol-ogy of Whites by offering them positions of powerand special privileges. This stratification persistedover time (Lewis, 2011).

However, in the United States around WorldWar I, the importance of complexion seemed to de-crease because of racial segregation which targetedall African Americans in same the manner (Telles,2009). In reaction to the segregation, the CivilRights Movement unified Blacks together regard-less of their skin colour. The “Black is Beautiful”Movement also emerged from this period, pro-moting dark complexion, kinky hair and blackfacial and physical features. Even black beautycontests that were historically won by light, Euro-pean looking Blacks started to choose dark AfricanAmericans with African features as their beautyqueens (Craig, 2009).

The “Black is Beautiful” movement left its marksince in the United States, Black women are morerepresented in the media than they were fiftyyears ago (Sengupta, 2006). In addition, it wasfound that African American women actually hada greater self-esteem than White women (Kelch-Oliver, 2011). African American women also regu-

larly rejected the thin beauty ideal and aspired toa beauty ideal that was more shapely and that hadmore curves (Kelch-Oliver, 2011). There are simi-lar findings in Africa where the traditional beautyidealizes women with curves, as being skinny isa synonym of being poor (Ribane, 2011). For ex-ample, in Nigeria, there are some beauty contestswhich promote the traditional African beauty andchallenge the so-called “international” beauty stan-dards (Balogun, 2012). This trend demonstratesthat some women refuse to conform to a whiteskinny ideal and are a good sign of change withinthe black community. Nonetheless, many studiesfound different results: skin color, hairstyle, bodytype and facial features of women still need tosatisfy the Eurocentric beauty standards in orderto be considered beautiful (Lewis, 2011). In themedia, even though Black women are now morerepresented, they need to correspond to the whiteideal by being overwhelmingly light skinned tone,skinny, European-like models. Even some AfricanAmerican magazines promote these beauty stan-dards (Brown White, 2005). In addition, advertis-ing and fashion companies repetitively whiten theskin of Black women through the use of digitalretouching (De Souza, 2008). In the United States,corporations sell billions of dollars of products tolighten African American skin tone (Glenn, 2009).In Africa, the selling of skin bleaching productshas significantly increased in the past decades(Pierre, 2008). Many of these products have beenproven to be toxic and to cause health problemsand were banned in several African countries, suchas Nigeria or Zimbabwe (Pierre, 2008). Nonethe-less, the illegal demand for these products is stillsubstantial (De Souza, 2008). Skin bleaching isgenerally socially accepted in communities andeven considered hygienic, as washing darker skinmakes someone “cleaner” (Hecquet, 2006). Eitherin the black communities of United States or inAfrica, there is still the common and open dis-course that lighter skin blacks are more attractiveand that they have better chances of getting mar-ried (Duke & Berry, 2012; Pierre, 2008 and Fokuo,2009). Some studies also show that dark complex-ion is only valued and represented as beautifulwhen there is space for “exotic” beauty (Balogun,2012).

Hair is another dimension of beauty that Blackwomen control to look more European. There is

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still a hierarchy between hair types, from havingstraight hair to very nappy hair (Robinson, 2011).The natural kinky hair that most Blacks have isconsidered to be inappropriate and “bad hair”,even though it is the hair that offers the mostdiverse hairstyle (Brown White, 2005; Robinson,2011). In the United States, some studies revealthat many African American women believed thatwearing natural hair was a political statement andthat if a woman did it she must be ready to besubjected to societal reprisal (Brown White, 2005;Thompson, 2009). Some African American womeneven mention that they never saw their naturalhair, because their mother straightened it at ayoung age (Brown White, 2005). To straightentheir hair, many Blacks use relaxer hair products,which are extremely painful and highly toxic (Stil-son, 2009). Another way to have straight hairis to buy weaves and extensions, but these areexpensive for the average citizen (Stilson, 2009).Finally, the decision of heterosexual Black womento comply to white beauty standards is also shapedby the perceived preferences of men. In general,Black women believe that men prefer light skinnedwomen with straight hair (Hunter, 1998). Severalstudies confirm this assumption: Black men ap-pear to generally prefer Black women with suchfeatures (Robinson, 2011). In addition, some stud-ies revealed that White, African American andAfrican men found White women (and white fea-tures) more attractive than Black women (andblack features) (Martin, 1964).

3. Method

I chose to analyze the effects of white beautystandards on Black women by looking at beautyblogs. Accessing the internet is becoming increas-ingly widespread and going on a blog is normallyfree of charge. Some academics argue that blogsare becoming the “citizen’s voice,” as anyone canstart a blog and disagree with the mainstreammedia (Kline & Burstein, 2005; Tremayne, 2007).Black bloggers do not have to agree with whitebeauty standards and may challenge the main-stream view and promote a more traditional blackbeauty. Bloggers also do not automatically needlarge financial investments to run their blog andthus do not necessarily deal with advertising com-

panies. Before jumping into the content analysis,here is a short historical background on bloggingand the research conducted on beauty blogs.

3.1. The History of Blogs

Blogs emerged principally from 1997 to 1999 (Siles,2012). During this period, blogs were usually akind of website providing links to other websiteswith some practical comments (Perderson, 2010).In 2002 and 2003, the creation of blogs got sim-plified and the number of blogs exploded aroundthe globe (Desilligny, 2010). As the blogospherebecame more accessible, a blog became more com-monly defined as an open diary, focusing more onpersonal opinions and everyday life rather than aplace to get links (Perderson, 2010). Bloggers canbecome the star of their blogs and foster a senseof community between their readers (Tremayne,2007). When a blog becomes very popular, it mayalso have multiple bloggers writing different pieces.Another key feature of a blog is that readers canleave comments (Tremayne, 2007; Hookway, 2008).Although bloggers have the power to remove them(Rocamora, 2011), remaining comments can givean insightful idea of a reader’s opinion on beautystandards.

Unfortunately, a single study on beauty blogswas found and only a handful number on fashionblogs. This trend reinforces Rocamora’s (2011)argument that academics considered fashion blogsto be at the bottom of the blogosphere hierar-chy below political, economical or journalism-likeblogs. Regardless of the small quantity of litera-ture available, the few sources provided insightfulinformation on women, beauty and blogs. Someresearchers argued that women who creates a blogdo so to reaffirm their identity (Rocamora, 2011).Since female identity is closely tied to appearance,blog, like a mirror, is an instrument to control andregulate female beauty (Rocamora, 2011). An-other academic also concluded that even thoughsome blogs were mostly part independent fromthe mainstream media, bloggers still did not chal-lenge the idea that the most important charac-teristic of women were their appearances (Lynch,2011). With this in mind, does it mean that Blackbloggers will generally agree with white beautystandards? Is race a factor mediating the effecton femininity? And again, how does the racial

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3.2 Blog Selection

context affect beauty blogging?

3.2. Blog Selection

I selected three different blogs for the UnitedStates and Africa. Each chosen blog needed tohave information on hair, skin care or makeup,and fashion in order to examine body type, hair,complexion, and facial features. Noted that theevaluation of facial features is mainly done bylooking at the shape of the nose, the lips, and theeyes of the person. For instance, blogs specializingon hairstyle were systematically disregarded, sinceit would reduce the scope of the research thatintends to look at the various aspects of beauty.The blogs from the United States needed to tar-get Black women as their primary audience. Theaudience was considered to be black women if theblogger directly mentioned it, or if Blacks werepredominant in pictures, or if makeup and hairtips were for Blacks. Beauty blogs that were sug-gested and described as black beauty blogs bypopular African American magazines and blogswere also considered eligible. I tried to choosethree blogs that varied in size, to know if adver-tising companies (sometimes present in big blogs)influenced the beauty standards of the blog. Ialso chose blogs that were still airing and in whichthe blogger posted at least once a month. Thisis important because when a blogger stops blog-ging for a long time period, it becomes difficultand complicated to calculate the web traffic of theblog. Web traffic gives an idea of how popular ablog is by looking at the quantity of data receivedand sent by visitor on a website (Alexa, 2013).Because this method is imperfect, I used four dif-ferent web traffic search engines to cross analyzethe results. The chosen search engines were AlexaInternet Inc. (2013), Adplanner (2013), Compete(2013), and Quantcast (2013). Alexa, also rankswebsites by popularity and even classifies themin different categories. I also noted if the bloghad a Facebook page and the number of likes ithad. To select black beauty blogs, I first used thesearch engine Alexa. Unfortunately, there wereno black beauty blogs in the top 500 websites ofall categories presented. Since there was a list ofthe most popular African websites, I went throughthis list to find black beauty blogs fitting my crite-ria. Some black beauty magazines were found but

black beauty blogs were absent from the 345 web-sites listed. I did the same search in the “beauty”category, but again, no black beauty blogs werefound within the 410 websites mentioned. I there-fore used another method to pre-select the blogs:I picked blogs that were recommended on famousAfrican American beauty magazines or websites.When the blog contained the required criteria, Ientered it in the multiple search engines to knowhow influential and big they were. The results ofthis analysis can be seen in appendix I at the endof this paper. It must be noted that the numberare subjected to change as web traffic informa-tion changes daily. The chosen African Americanbeauty blogs were Fashion Bomb Daily, Afrobella,and The Glamazons.The Fashion Bomb Daily (Fashion Bomb

Blog, 2013) was the highest ranked black beautyblog fitting my standards, with a rank of 12 027on Alexa’s website. The blog also had a Facebookpage with 47 152 likes. Although the creator ofthe blog claims to focus on multicultural fash-ion, her blog features primarily Black models andBlacks readers, and has advertisements targetingBlacks. The blog was also designated best blogof the month by Black Enterprise black and rec-ommended by the Black magazines Ebony, TheCurvy Fashionista, and others. The blog was cre-ated by the (African American) journalist ClaireSulmers in 2006. Claire still writes many articlesbut she now has two other writers contributingto her blog. Afrobella (2013) is principally writ-ten by Patrice Grell Yursik, a native of Trinidad.Afrobella is ranked 67,838 on Alexa and has 21235 likes on its Facebook page. Patrice createdher blog in August 2006, for the celebration of nat-ural hair and women of all shades. This blog wasrecommended by major Black magazines such asEssence, Ebony, the Curvy Fashionista and otherwebsites (Afrobella, 2013). According to BlackEnterprise website, Afrobella was also within thetwenty best Black blogs of the United States in2012 (Black Enterprise, 2013). In addition, Patricepartnered with MAC cosmetics in 2012 to launcha lipstick collection. She also has her own storeand features Body Shop ads which demonstratesthe notoriety she has acquired. The last Americanblog is the Glamazons Blog (2013). Ranked128,707 on Alexa, it has the smaller number of 6140 likes on its Facebook page. The Glamazons

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was recommended by The Curvy Fashionista, TheRoot and Vibe Vixen websites (Glamazons Blog,2013). The Glamazons was created by Jessica C.Andrews and Andrea Arterbery, two women whomoved to New York City to work in the fashionindustry. After a few years, they both left theirjobs and started the blog around 2008. Their blogis popular enough that they have two other occa-sional writers and a YouTube channel, althoughthere are no commercial ads on their blog.

For the African blogs, I decided to choose beautyblogs from a specific country, Nigeria. First, thiscountry was colonized by Britain and thereforethere is a significant proportion of the populationwho understands, speaks, and writes English. Thisis important because I wanted to analyze blogswritten in English to make the comparison easierbetween the African American and African blogs.Nigeria also has a large majority of Black citizensin contrast with the United States. In addition,Nigeria is a country economically on the rise whichmeans that more people have money and thus aremore likely to go on the internet than citizens ofa country in crisis or extremely poor. Accordingto the World Bank (2013), internet access in Nige-ria is one of the highest of Sub-Saharan Africawith approximately 28.4 percentage. In addition,nearly half of the 166 million population of Nigerialives in an urban area, where accessing internetis generally simpler. In absolute term, it alsomeans that a large number of Nigerian womencan access beauty blogs. Nollywood (the Nige-rian movie industry) is also an important industrythat can foster the proliferation of beauty blogs,since stars set fashion style and beauty ideal. Allthese reasons make Nigeria an ideal country tocompare with the United States when looking atBlack beauty blogs.

To choose the beauty blogs in Nigeria, I alsoused the lists of Alexa. I looked at the top 500most popular websites of Nigeria but there wasnot a single beauty blog in the list. I then searchedthrough the recommendations of Nigerian onlinemagazines and popular websites. I then comparedthe web traffic of these blogs with the differentsearch engines and verified that the blogs were stillairing. The details results can be seen in appendixI. It must be noted that in absolute terms, therewere significantly less beauty blogs in Nigeria thanin the United States. For this reason, the three

African blogs are more similar in size and in popu-larity than the American blogs. The chosen blogswere Stella’s Addiction, Beauty in Lagos, and TheFashion Engineer. Stella’s Addiction (Stella,2013) was ranked 8 823 most visited website inNigeria on Alexa and had 700 likes on its Facebookpage. This blog was nominated best beauty blogaccording to judge’s vote of 2012 by the websiteNigeria Blog Award. Numerous blogs such as TheThird World Professional recommended the blog.It was created in 2010 by Stella, a business studentwho has a growing passion for makeup. The bloghas a single advertisement. Beauty in Lagos(BeautyinLagos, 2013) was ranked 4 897 on Alexaand had 115 likes on Facebook. In 2012, this blogalso won the title of best beauty blog according tothe popular vote by the Nigeria Blog Award web-site. This award seems prestigious as many otherblogs and websites refer to it. The creator, whodoes not revealed her identity, started the blog atthe beginning of 2012 when she moved back toLagos (Nigeria’s capital) after living in the UnitedKingdom for some time. The Fashion Engineer(Nytan-Runsewe, 2013) was ranked 7 572 on Alexaand had a total of 500 likes on Facebook. The blogwas also nominated for best beauty blog-NigerianBlog Awards in 2012. This blog was created onJanuary 27, 2012 by Sayedero Enytan-Runsewe,an engineering student, makeup artist and shopowner. There are no commercial advertisementson Beauty in Lagos and The Fashion Engineerand only a very few on Stella’s Addiction.

Readers should also keep in mind that the Amer-ican blogs had a substantial higher number of likeson their Facebook page and higher web traffic thanthe Nigerian blogs. This suggests that even thoughthese are popular and important blogs in Nigeria,there are still relatively small in comparison to theAmerican ones. In addition, the Nigerian bloggersfelt more personal and focus on their everyday life,while the African American bloggers were able tomeet celebrities and have more sections in theirblogs.

4. Positionality

As a White person (who, in addition, roughly fitsthe white beauty standards), I am conscious thatI cannot feel alienated or perceived white beauty

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standards the same way Blacks feel. I also under-stand that my ideas about beauty have alreadybeen affected by the white standards and uncon-sciously affected my research. Despite the factthat I do not like the fashion and beauty industry,since they promote a very narrow definition ofbeauty, after looking at Black beauty blogs, I sur-prised myself several times thinking things suchas: “Oh gosh she has such a huge butt, that’s notpretty!” I realized how the white beauty ideal areembedded in me. I tried my best to stop stereotyp-ing, but I do not want to pretend that my personalbackground did not affect the way I analysed thebeauty blogs.

5. Findings

Within the African American blogs, there were atotal of eight posts of The Fashion Bomb Daily,ten posts of Afrobella, and eight posts of TheGlamazons that were analyzed. In regards to theAfrican blogs, eight posts of Beauty in Lagos, eightposts of Stella’s Addiction, and eight posts of TheFashion Engineer were analyzed. Overall, the anal-ysis reveals that there was a frequent differencebetween the representation of celebrities and noncelebrities. The category of celebrities includesnot only famous women but also fashion models,because although they are different occupations,both are references in term of beauty and looks.Non celebrities are defined as everyday women,usually readers who send their pictures to theblogs. It must also be noted that the numbersare not the same across categories since it wasoften impossible to evaluate the facial featuresand the body type of women. Furthermore, theabundant pictures of the bloggers themselves werenot counting in the results as they would skew theresults, but their importance will be analyzed inthe discussion.

5.1. Non Blacks Featured in Blogs

African blogs only featured Black women and menand did not include White celebrities or White noncelebrities. However, within the African Americanblogs, there was a total of 28 pictures of celebritiesthat were not Black, 14 featuring one particularcelebrity, Kim Kardashian. This celebrity wasskinny with curves and represented 50% of the

non Black pictures. Excluding her in a separatecategory since she skewed the data, 8 of the 28celebrities (29%) were skinny or very skinny, 6(21%) were skinny with curves and none werecurvy. As expected, all the White celebrities hadstraight hair, light complexion and European fa-cial features.

5.2. Black Featured: Body Type

Looking exclusively at pictures of Black women,African American blogs featured a high percent-age of skinny and very skinny women: 33 of the48 celebrities (69%) were skinny or very skinnywhereas there were 10 of the 27 non celebrities(37%) that were skinny or very skinny. The re-sults were a little bit different within the Africanblogs where women, celebrity or not, were pre-dominantly skinny or very skinny: 35 of the 41celebrities (85%) were skinny or very skinny while23 of the 29 non celebrities (79%) were.

Skinny women with curves were also representedat a higher percentage within the non celebritiesthan within celebrities. In this analysis, curveswere defined as having a large bottom and a largebreast. In the Black American blogs, 9 out of 48celebrities (18%) were identified as skinny withcurves, while 9 out of 27 non celebrities (33%)were skinny with curves. In the African blogs,the results were a little bit smaller: 5 out of 41celebrities (12%) fit in this category, while 17%of non celebrities were. Lastly, curvy women rep-resented a small percentage of women featuredin both African American and African blogs. Inthe African American blogs, 6 of the 48 celebrities(13%) were curvy, but the percentage is signifi-cantly higher for non celebrities: 8 of the 27 noncelebrities (30%) were considered curvy. The num-ber of curvy women in African blogs is smaller:only one celebrity (2%) and one non celebrity (3%)were curvy.

If we look the body type of women regardlessof their notoriety, the African American blogs fea-tured 43 women (57%) who were skinny and veryskinny, 18 (24%) who were skinny with curves,and 14 (19%) who were curvy. In the Africanblogs, 58 (83%) were skinny or very skinny, 10(14%) were skinny with curves, and 2 (3%) werecurvy.

In addition, the African American blogs in-

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5.3 Hair and Hairstyle

cluded 4 comments expressing evident preferencefor skinny and very skinny body type, while only1 such comment was found in the African blogs.No comments expressing preference for curves orcurvy women were found in the African Americanor the African blogs.

5.3. Hair and Hairstyle

In the African American blogs, there were 55 ofthe 88 celebrities (63%) who had straight hair,while this percentage increases to 69% when welook at non celebrities. The African Americanblogs also featured 33 of the 88 celebrities (38%)who had a natural hairstyle while 8 of the 26 noncelebrities (31%) had this style. It is thereforenot surprising to note that if we confounded thecelebrity and non celebrity categories, there were73 of the total 114 women (64%) who had straighthair and 41 (36%) who had a natural hairstyle.

For their part, the African blogs featured 48of the 64 celebrities (75%) with straight hairand 8 of non celebrities (27%) with straighthairstyle. The remaining 16 celebrities had a nat-ural hairstyle which represents 25% of celebrities.However, African non celebrities wore an unex-pected hairstyle that created a third hairstyle cat-egory: the head wrap. 11 of the 30 non celebrities(37%) adopted that particular hairstyle. Conse-quently, in the African blogs, when the celebrityand non celebrity categories were combined, therewere 56 women (57%) who had straight hair, 27(29%) who had a natural hairstyle and 11 (12%)who wore a traditional head wrap.

Overall, in the African American blogs, therewere also 6 comments expressing a preference forstraight hairstyle, while there were 3 such com-ments in the African blogs previously mentioned.Conversely, in the African American blogs, therewere 16 comments expressing a preference for nat-ural hairstyle, while there were only 2 such com-ments in the African blogs.

5.4. Complexion

In the African American blogs, there were 59 ofthe 88 celebrities (67%) who had a light or verylight complexion, while the number of non celebri-ties with light skin tone was lower: 12 out of the 26women (46%) had this complexion. In the African

blogs, 59 of the 71 celebrities (83%) had light orvery light complexion. This percentage decreasessubstantially when we look at non celebrities: 6out of the 23 women (26%) had a light or verylight skin tone.

Accordingly, 29 (33%) of the African Americancelebrities and 14 (54%) of the African Americannon celebrities had brown or dark skin. The re-sults are contrastive in the African blogs: 12 of the71 celebrities (17%) had brown or dark complexionwhile the percentage sharply climbs to 74% whenwe look at the representation of non celebrities.Overall, 71 of the 114 women (62%) featured inthe Black American blogs had light or very lightskin tone and 43 (38%) had brown or dark skin.In the African blogs, 65 of the 94 women (69%)portrayed had light or very light complexion andthus, the remaining 29 (31%) had brown or darkskin tone.

In the African American blogs, there were 3comments reflecting a preference for light skintone over darker skinned tone and no commentreflecting the opposite preference. In the Africanblogs, there was a single comment showing a pref-erence to light complexion and no such commentstating a preference for brown or dark skin tone.

5.5. Facial Features

In the African American blogs, 34 of the 91 celebri-ties (37%) had European facial features while 2 ofthe 18 non celebrities (11%) presented the samephenotype. In African blogs, the findings were sim-ilar, although the sample size is much smaller: 4out of the 10 celebrities (40%) and 1 of the 14 noncelebrities (7%) featured in the blogs had facial fea-tures resembling the ones of Europeans. AfricanAmerican celebrities and non celebrities that hadEuropean and African facial features both werefew: only 9 of the 91 American celebrities (10%)and 2 of the 18 non celebrities (11%) present mixedfacial features. Comparably, the African blogs had2 celebrities (20%) and 3 non celebrities (30%) whohad mixed facial features. In the African Ameri-can blogs, there were 48 celebrities (10%) and 2non celebrities (11%) who had more African facialfeatures. For its part, the African blogs featured40% of celebrities and 71% of non celebrities withAfrican facial features. Overall, the Americanblogs featured 36 women with white facial fea-

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tures (33%) 11 women with mixed ones (10%) and62 women with African facial features (57%). Dif-ferently, the African blogs featured 5 women withEuropean features (21%), 5 women with mixed fea-tures (21%), and 14 women with African features(58%).

There were no comments expressing a prefer-ence for European, mixed, or African features ineither the African American or the African blogs.

6. Discussion

6.1. Body Types

It was found that in both African American andAfrican blogs, being skinny as opposed to be-ing curvy remains a crucial beauty standard thatcelebrities must meet. In the African Americanblogs, there were as much as 69% of celebritieswho were either skinny or very skinny. For exam-ple, one of the most recurrent celebrities featuredin the African American blogs was Rihanna, avery skinny woman without the traditional volup-tuous curves of Black women. The fact that themajority of Black celebrity women were skinny orvery skinny suggests that the Hollywood industry,and elite in general, are still dominated by whitebeauty standards and that people need to fulfillthese standards in order to enter this prestigiousworld. In addition, there were 4 comments, bybloggers and readers, expressing manifest prefer-ence for being skinny over being curvy. For exam-ple, in one post of Afrobella (2013), the blogger,Patrice, analyzes the album cover of the Jamaicansinger Grace Jones. Jones looks exceptionallyskinny and athletic on this image, but the bloggerthinks that she looks incredibly beautiful. With-out shame, Patrice explains that the image hadbeen digitally retouched and provides the “before”pictures to show the transformation. The “before”pictures features a Jones notably less skinny andwith a different body position. The author ofthe article comments that she admires the pictureespecially because the photo showed Jones in aposture that emphasized her gracefulness and hersleek skin. However, she does not question thefact that her idol has been made considerably skin-nier, implying that this is irrelevant to mention.Another example which subtly pointed out theimportance of looking skinny is presented in the

Fashion Bomb Daily (2013). In a post explaininghow to wear the color black, two readers com-ment that they really like the color black, becauseit made them look slimmer. This preference byAfrican American bloggers for skinny and veryskinny body type without curves and the fact thatthey do not question the status quo regarding the“ideal” weight, reinforces Brown White’s (2005) andLewis’ (2011) argument that Blacks themselvesperpetuate the white beauty criteria. It is also inopposition with Kline’s and Burstein’s (2005) ideathat blogs could be the voices of ordinary peopleas opposed to the mainstream industry.

Similarly, in the African blogs, skinny and veryskinny celebrities represent the majority of pic-tures with a high percentage of 85. This is easilynoticeable in one post of Stella’s Addiction (2013),where the blogger presented the African fashionshow Sleek and Jumia Fashion Hair. In this fash-ion show, the hostess and all models were veryskinny and did not have curves. The importanceof being skinny is also revealed in one blogger’scomment and in the readers’ reactions of a post.In her post, Sayedero, the creator of The FashionEngineer, mentioned that she has gained a lot ofweight and that she now has a “fat face”. Shethen received several comments saying that she isbeautiful and looks amazing, one comment evensaying that she looks pretty, “fat face” or not.This comment on gaining weight clearly demon-strates that Sayedero has a very skinny beautyideal, as she still looks skinny after she “gainedweight”. The readers also appear to agree withher body type ideal since they do not questionthe fact that she thinks she has a big face, eventhough she still looks fairly skinny.

Paradoxically, even though being skinny ispresented as the norm within Black celebrities,African American blogs featured diversified bodytype for Black non celebrities. Only 37% of every-day women were skinny or very skinny, as muchas 33% were skinny with curves, and 30% werecurvy. In addition, one of the American bloggerswas curvy and posted many pictures of herselfin her blog. Thus, if these pictures had been in-cluded in the results, they would have skewed theresults in favour of curvy women, meaning thatlooking at this blog greatly exposes the reader toimages of curvy women. This difference betweenBlack celebrities and Black non celebrities body

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6.2 Hair and Hairstyle

type somewhat reinforces Kelch-Oliver’s (2011)argument saying that Black women reject the thinwhite beauty ideal, but in regard to these blogs,distinction between famous and non famous peo-ple should be made. In this case, while reinforcingthe norm for celebrities, the African Americanbloggers also challenged it by choosing to postpictures of women who do not have the “ideal”body type.

Furthermore, most non Black celebrities fea-tured in the African American blogs had the typ-ical curves of Blacks. As many as 71% of nonBlack celebrities were skinny with curves, withone celebrity in particular being responsible forabout 50% of skinny with curves photos. Nonethe-less, it seems that when Black bloggers decidedto include non Blacks in their blogs, they try tocompensate their whiteness with Black features.However, curvy non Black women were nonexis-tent, suggesting that there are actually very fewcurvy non Black celebrities - or that - bloggersdid not want to challenge that much white beautystandards by including them.

Conversely, within the African blogs, there wasonly a small percentage of everyday women whowere skinny with curves (17%) or curvy (3%). Thisdisagrees with the findings of Balogun (2012) andindicates that African blogs do indeed follow thewhite beauty standards.

6.2. Hair and Hairstyle

In the United States, blogs had a higher number ofpictures featuring women with straight hair thanwomen with natural hair: 55 (63%) celebrities hadstraight hair in comparison with 32 (38%) whohad natural hair. The results for non celebritiesare very similar: 69% had straight hair and 31%had a natural hairstyle. In addition, the 28 Whitecelebrities presented also had straight hair. Thus,it is clear that readers overwhelmingly see morepicture of women with straight hair than thosewith curly or nappy hair. These results are par-ticularly surprising concerning the Afrobella blog(2013). Although the blogger declared to have cre-ated the blog for the celebration of natural hair,she features numerous women with straight hair.Of course, if we include the photos of the bloggerherself (she has natural hair) then these counttowards women with natural hair and it means

that readers see natural hair more often on thisblog. However, it also means that even thoughthe blogger might prefer natural hair, she stillencounters more pictures of women with straighthair.

Moreover, the various types of natural hairstylesappear to have distinct value: there are manywomen with braids and with afros, and 3 womenwith dreads. In addition, wearing dreads seemsto carry a significance related to exotic looks. Forinstance, 1 of the 3 pictures featuring women withdreads was of a celebrity wearing tribal clothingwhile doing a musical performance. Since theartist did not kept the dreads after the show, thedreads seemed to be an accessory linked to theprimitive and exotic world she created through hermusical performance. These various observationscorroborate Robinson’s (2011) argument aboutthe hierarchy between hair types.

However, the comments of bloggers, and some-times readers, did not demonstrate overall pref-erence for straight hair. In fact, 16 commentswere expressing a preference for natural hairstylewhile only 6 expressed a preference for straighthair. Thus, even though there were more women(famous or not) with straight hair, women adopt-ing natural hairstyle received, on average, morepositive feedback than women who had straighthair. Furthermore, African American bloggers con-stantly spent more time describing the hairstyle ofcelebrity who had a natural hairstyle than celebritywho had straight hair. Bloggers also publishedseveral posts on how to take care of one’s nat-ural hair. In short, natural hairstyle appearedto be a rare, but well-regarded style. This posi-tion relative to hairstyle suggests that the “Blackis Beautiful” movement marked the Black com-munity with pride in wearing their hair naturally.Black bloggers and readers demonstrate their prideof natural hair by encouraging and complimentingwomen who wear this hairstyle. At the same time,during the “Black is Beautiful” period, wearinghair naturally was associated with making a polit-ical statement. Now that the movement is over,it seems that many Black women find it difficultto carry this significance on their shoulder. Somereaders comments demonstrate this idea by sayingthings such as: “I have to say that going [for a]natural [hairstyle] is not for everyone” (Afrobella,2013). Thus, Black women appear to be proud of

page 9 of 21

6.3 Complexion

women who maintain their natural hair, but aregenerally not ready to do it themselves. Thesefindings go in the same direction as Robinson’s(2011) and Brown White (2005) research, whichsay that wearing natural hair is still associatedwith making a political statement. However, thesetwo researchers also concluded that women wereafraid of retaliation from other Blacks, but thispaper suggests that Black women seem to be sup-portive of other women having natural hair.

On the Nigerian blogs, the results were some-what similar: 48 pictures (75%) featured celebri-ties had straight hair and 16 (25%) celebritieshad natural hair. However, the hairstyle of noncelebrities were more diversified: 8 of the 30 noncelebrities (27%) had straight hair and 11 (37%)had natural hair. There were also 3 commentsexpressing a preference for straight hair and 2expressing a preference for natural hair. The pref-erence for straight hair, however, was admittedwith a certain guilt, as this reader well illustrates:“I just started taking care of my hair recently beforethen Id just hide it under weaves. I still hide it tho(hide just sounds sooo wrong..lool) ...” (Enytan-Runsewe, 2013). Thus, even though this reader,and another one, were ashamed to acknowledge it,they still preferred her extensions over her naturalhair. Like in the African American blogs, Nige-rian women could feel a certain pride in relationto their natural hair, but the price of it seemsto be high and most women prefer to stay safeand have straight hair. This overall suggests thatwhite beauty standards have successfully reachAfrican women.

However, the remaining 11 non celebrities (37%)wear an unexpected hairstyle that did not fit thetwo previous hair categories: the gele. The geleis a type of head wrap that African men andwomen traditionally wear. Not only to look good,historically, the gele “communicate personal andcultural knowledge and attitudes about the humanexperience” (Arnoldi & Kreamer, 1995). Today,wearing a gele could mean different things in re-gard to hair standards. Unfortunately, the reasonswhy African women wear a gele were neither ex-plained by the bloggers nor encountered in theliterature. Two interpretations appear to be plau-sible. First, wearing a head wrap could be seenas a form of resistance to white hair standards,as head wrap is not a common hair accessory in

the West and Whites do not have a strong his-tory of wearing head wraps. As a result, the gelewould be at the same time a way to demonstrateAfrican pride and also a way to reject white hairstandards. This interpretation would be similarto Balogun’s (2012) findings, since she suggeststhat some African beauty contests challenge whitebeauty standards and seek to promote traditionalAfrican beauty. However, wearing a head wrapcould also be seen as a form of negotiation of thewhite standards: since we cannot see the woman’shair, she could be hiding her natural hair. Thisidea that wearing a traditionalist accessory, a signof nationalist pride, is done because it fits morethe white beauty standards than wearing its hairnatural is an interesting proposition that the previ-ous literature did not investigate and which wouldbe worth exploring in future research.

Lastly, both African American and Africanblogs never mention hair relaxer products or wrotearticles on how to take care of one’s weaves orextensions. This seems surprising since both com-munities buy large amount of relaxer productsevery year (Stilson, 2009). This silence on hairstraighten suggests a discomfort or a shame re-garding this practice.

6.3. Complexion

In the African American blogs, the skin tone ofnon celebrities was distributed fairly equally: 12of the 26 non celebrities (46%) had a light skinnedtone while 14 (54%) had a more brown or darkskin tone. However, there were more celebrities(67%) with a light complexion in comparison withcelebrities with brown or dark complexion (33%).Furthermore, there were 5 comments expressinga preference for a light complexion over a brownor dark one. For instance, in The Fashion BombDaily (2013), two readers explained that they startto use makeup only around their mid twenties, be-cause putting makeup was more difficult for Blackwomen with dark complexion. The readers alsosaid that they wish they had a lighter skin toavoid this problem. In short, a light skin tonewas perceived as an advantage over having a darkcomplexion. Nonetheless, the most striking ob-servation was probably that African Americanbloggers did not question or talk about the useof whitening products even when it would have

page 10 of 21

6.4 Facial Features

been very pertinent to do so. For instance, in oneof Afrobella’s post (2013), Patrice describes theaccessibility of makeup for Black women through-out the different decades. In this article, there aremany old advertisements of skin bleaching prod-ucts displayed, but the author barely mentions thispractice, much less condemning it. Like straight-ening their hair, making their skin look lighterappears to be a hidden practice that Blacks donot talk about, even though, as previously said, itis widely spread (Glenn, 2009). The preference forlighter skin confirms the earlier findings of Pierre(2008) and Duke & Berry (2012) and suggestingthat white skin standards do indeed affect AfricanAmerican women. However, unlike Pierre’s (2008)and Duke & Berry’s (2012) findings, it appearsthat light complexion preference is not an openlydiscussed subject.

In the Nigerian blogs, the percentage of lightskinned celebrities was even higher with 83% oflight skin celebrities and only 27% of brown ordark skin celebrities. This trend suggests that theNollywood and fashion industry where the celebri-ties come from are influenced by white beautystandards. It also implies that, unlike Balogun(2012) suggested, darker complexion of fashionmodels or other type of famous people was notperceived as an exotic commodity, but simply hasa less valuable skin tone.

Differently from the celebrities, only 26% ofnon celebrities had a light skinned tone, whereas74% had a dark or brown complexion. WhileAfrican bloggers did not present more light skintone non celebrities than brown or dark skin tonenon celebrities, one comment in the Beauty inLagos blog implied an overall preference for lightskin tone. In her post, the blogger does a review ofa particular brand of sunscreen. This post seemedirrelevant until the blogger explained what arethe myths regarding sunscreen that would preventpeople from using it. One of the listed myth isthat sunscreen makes you dark or darker (Beau-tyinLagos, 2013), implying that having a darkcomplexion is negative. In addition, there wereno article about skin bleaching or skin whiten-ing products, even though, as already mentioned,African countries are important consumers of skinbleaching products (Pierre, 2008). Like in theAfrican American blogs, avoiding to talk aboutthis subject makes a blogger complicit of the pref-

erence for white skin. Thus, even though therewas not an open discussion about the fact thatlighter skin was ideal, as Fokuo (2009) suggested,the preference for lighter complexion still remain.

6.4. Facial Features

In contrast to the other subsections, the facialfeatures of Black women featured in blogs didnot appear to correspond predominantly to whitebeauty criteria. In the African American blogs,37% of celebrities had European facial features.Although this percentage is not insignificant, it isrelatively low in comparison with the other beautycharacteristics (body type, hair, or complexion)which, for celebrities, had white features between63% to 69% of the time. Because of this rela-tively low percentage for white facial features, onemight expect that women with mixed facial fea-tures would be numerous, but this was not thecase: only 10% of celebrities had both Europeanand African features, while 53% of celebrities hadAfrican facial features.

On the same line, as many as 78% of AfricanAmerican non celebrities had African facial fea-tures. There was also not a single comment imply-ing a preference for white facial features, althoughthere were also no comments expressing a prefer-ence for mixed or African features. Thus, unlikewhat Patrice Sims (2012) would predict, this pa-per does not suggest a preference for mixed facialfeatures over African ones. In regards to celebri-ties, it can be hypothesized that Black women are“allowed” to have Black facial features, since theyfulfill the other white beauty criteria. For noncelebrities, it was already noted that Americanbloggers sometimes challenge the white beautystandards by including pictures of Black womenwho had curvy body type. It appears that thereare also more lenient toward non celebrities inregards to facial features.

The numbers are a little bit different in theAfrican blogs where African celebrities wereslightly more likely than African American celebri-ties to have European or mixed facial features:about 40% of celebrities had white facial features,20% had mixed features and the remaining 40%had African facial features. The numbers are dif-ferent when we look at African non celebrities.Only 7% of non celebrities had European facial

page 11 of 21

features and 71% had African features. This dif-ference confirms that having white or mixed facialfeatures is important in Nigeria to get into thecelebrities and modeling world, but that most ofthe population do not have these facial traits.

It must also be recognized that in both theUnited States and Nigeria, facial features aresomething that women can only alter at the ex-pensive and dangerous price of surgery. Thus,most Black women might accept (or tolerate) theirAfrican facial features and try to compensate this“Africaness” through other beauty facets, such asbody type of hairstyle, which are more easily trans-formed.

7. Limitations

There are a number of limitations to this research.First of all, this study only examined three AfricanAmerican and three African beauty blogs, which isa fairly small number in comparison to the size ofthe blogosphere. In addition, only between eightand ten posts were examined within each of theblogs, which means that the generalizations couldbe drastically altered if at a higher number hadbeen examined. There was also more informationon body type and hairstyle than complexion andfacial features. Future research could focus on eachtheme separately to ensure more detail and a morecomplete analysis. As previously mentioned, thesize of the African American and African blogsvary substantially. The fact that the Nigerianblogs were more personal and open to a smalleraudience might also affect the results.

8. Conclusion

Overall, in regard to the celebrities, this researchconfirms Brown White’s (2005) and Lewis’ (2011)research, since body type, hairstyle, and complex-ion portrayed in the African American and Africanblogs follow the white beauty standards. However,the results of non celebrities do not follow a clearpattern: African American non celebrities followwhite beauty standards in term of hairstyle, butnot in term of body type and facial features, whileAfrican non celebrities meet the standards in re-gards to body type, but not in terms of hairstyle,complexion and facial features. Nonetheless, the

African American bloggers expressed a preferencefor body type and complexion that were in accor-dance with white beauty standards. However, incontradiction with the white beauty standards, theBlack American blogs also vividly support womenwho wear natural hair. For their parts, Africanblogs expressed a preference for light skin tone,even when it featured many dark non celebritywomen. Thus as a whole, it seems that both BlackAmericans and Africans bloggers are still favouringwhite beauty standards, even though they give cer-tain room to other types of beauty. For this reason,this paper disagrees with Kline’s and Burstein’s(2005) research that suggests that blogs are morelikely to have a “true” voice than mainstream me-dia. Despite their different racial context, BlackAmerican and African women appear to face (andfollow) the same white beauty ideal. Future re-search could look at whether Black men (AfricanAmerican or African) and women of other racialgroups deal with white beauty standards. Fu-ture research could also analyze flourishing mediatools such as Facebook pages or twitter accountsof celebrities to understand how they perpetuatewhite beauty standards.

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page 14 of 21

A. Blog Selection

A.1. Research for American blogs

Table 1 shows the data gathered for American blogs.*Data found on February 4, 2013 and is subject to change.A dash (-) signifies that the information could not be found on the search engine

page 15 of 21

A.1 Research for American blogs

Web

site

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(Ran

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the

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pag

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fashionbombdaily.com

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day

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com

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9.61

325

502

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230,

674

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1:Data

gathered

forAmericanblogs

page 16 of 21

A.2 Research for African blogs

A.2. Research for African blogs

Table 2 shows the data gathered for African blogs. Quantast was not used for African blogs since thissearch engine primarily looks at American websites.

*Data found on February 4, 2013 and is subject to change.A dash (-) signifies that the information could not be found on the search engine

page 17 of 21

A.2 Research for African blogs

Web

site

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xa

(ran

kin

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)

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e(p

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beautyinlagos.com

8823

(77%

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-it

or

from

Nig

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)

--

Yes

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likes

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nB

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ward

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http://www.pwettybambi.

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bal:

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-Y

es32

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inate

dby

the

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ward

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lyab

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tm

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http://naijapose.com

377

(87%

from

N)

1-

10K

per

day

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es31

4li

kes

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(#70

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agos

)10

K-

100K

3546

6Y

es27

614

-Naij

aP

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On

lin

em

aga-

zin

e

http://sarahofili.

wordpress.com

6,4

75,5

17

(worl

d-

wid

e)

--

Yes

105

1fo

llow

ers

-Nig

eria

nB

log

Aw

ard

web

site

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top

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ing

at

the

beg

inn

ing

of

2012,

ther

e-fo

rew

ebtr

af-

fic

hav

em

ore

chan

ces

tob

ein

acc

ura

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Table

2:Data

gathered

forAfricanblogs

page 18 of 21

B. Quantitative Results

-Note that the pictures of the bloggers themselves were not count.-Note that the numbers are not the same across the tables since often it was sometimes impossible tosee the body type (close-up pictures) or the facial features (a picture from far).

B.1. Body types of non Black featured in blogs

Body type African Americanblogs

African blogs

Non Black women Skinny/very skinny 8 - 29% 0

Skinny with curves 6 - 21% 0

Particular celebrity(skinny with curves)

14 - 50%

Curvy 0 - 0% 0

Total # of celebrities 28 0

B.2. Body type of Black featured in blogs

Type of people African Americanblogs

African blogs

Skinny/ very skinny Celebrities/models 33 - 69% 35 - 85%

Non celebrities 10 - 37% 23 - 79%

Total # ofskinny/very skinny

43 - 57% 58 - 84%

Skinny with curves Celebrities/models 9 - 18% 5 - 12%

Non celebrities 9 - 33% 5 - 17%

Total # of skinnywith curves

18 - 24% 10 - 14%

Curvy Celebrities/models 6 - 13% 1 - 2%

Non celebrities 8 - 30% 1 - 3%

Total # of curvy 14 - 19% 2 - 3%

Total # of celebrities 48 41

Total # of noncelebrities

27 29

Total # of women 75 70

Comments Preference for skinny 4 1

Preference for skinnywith curves

0 0

Preference for curvy 0 0

B.3. Hair

*Straight hair is defined as hair that looks straight because of relaxer products or because it is aweaves or extensions. Straight hair with curls done with a iron are also included since Black womencannot naturally have this hair type.

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B.4 Complexion

Type of people African Americanblogs

African blogs

Straight hair* Celebrities/models 55 - 63% 48 - 75%

Non-celebrities 18 - 69% 8 - 27%

Total 73 - 64% 56 - 57%

Natural hair Celebrities/models 33 - 38% 16 - 25%

Non-celebrities 8 - 31% 11 - 37%

Total # of naturalhair

41 - 36% 27 - 29%

Traditional hairstyle(gele)

Celebrities/models 0 0

Non-celebrities 0 11 - 37%

Total # of tradi-tional hairstyle

0 11 - 12%

Total # of celebrities 88 64

Total # of noncelebrities

26 30

Total # of women 114 94

Comments Preference forstraight hair

6 3

Preference for natu-ral hair

16 2

B.4. Complexion

Type of people African-Americanblogs

African blogs

Light Celebrities/models 59 - 67% 59 - 83%

Non-celebrities 12 - 46% 6 - 26%

Total of light 71 - 62% 65 - 69%

Brown/dark Celebrities/models 29 - 33% 12 - 17%

Non celebrities 14 - 54% 17 - 74%

Total of brown/dark 43 - 38% 29 - 31%

Total number ofcelebrities

88 71

Total number of noncelebrities

26 23

Total number ofwomen

114 94

Comments Preference for lightskin

3 1

Preference forBrown/dark skin

0 0

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B.5 Facial Features

B.5. Facial Features

Type of people African-Americanblogs

African blogs

European features Celebrities/models 34 - 37% 4 - 40%

Non-celebrities 2 - 11% 1 - 7%

Total of Europeanfeatures

36 - 33% 5 - 21%

Mixed(African/European)features

Celebrities/models 9 - 10% 2 - 20%

Non-celebrities 2 - 20% 3 - 30%

Total # of mixed fea-tures

11 - 10% 5 - 21%

African features Celebrities/models 48 - 53% 4 - 40%

Non-celebrities 14 - 78% 10 - 71%

Total of African fea-tures

62 - 57% 14 - 58%

Total # of celebrities 91 10

Total # of noncelebrities

18 14

Total # of women 109 24

Comments Preference for Euro-pean features

0

Preference forAfrican features

Preference for mixedfeatures

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