cleverdireego

Ava Pearl channeling Baby Girl Aaliyah

Location: Los Angeles, CA

Wearing: vintage Tommy Hilfiger styled by Hella Thrifty

I grew up in Senegal, where more than 50 percent of the women bleach their skin, and skin bleaching is a huge deal. I grew up seeing my cousins and my aunts using it. My cousin pressured me and they wanted me to use skin bleaching products but my sister said you’re not using it because a lot of them experience the damages [from it].Earlier this year, a friend of mine who works in the fashion industry told me that I had a commercial look, and asked me to model a turtleneck for a segment on a local NYC fashion news network. A few months later I was invited back to model, but this time it was for a major national morning show. I was thrilled. I never thought that someone like me—with dark skin and thick thighs—could ever “model.” I counted down the days.

I arrived on set as instructed: makeup free and with my hair straight—not curly. The makeup artist on set shot me a look of annoyance. She had no color in her makeup set to match me and used foundation way lighter than my complexion, which made my skin look ashy. She swiped a bright pink lipstick on my full lips, to make me “pop,” she said. I didn’t feel like I was poppin’ at all. I felt like I was being made up to look like a clown.

I knew that my one painful, personal experience modeling couldn’t be an isolated one.

So I spoke with eight black models about their experiences in the industry, the microaggressions they’ve experienced, the ways in which they have been made to feel less-than. I asked each model to speak specifically to that body part or feature that once made them feel insecure but is now their biggest motivator.

Khoudia Diop, 19, The Colored Girl Project

I grew up in Senegal, where more than 50 percent of the women bleach their skin, and skin bleaching is a huge deal. I grew up seeing my cousins and my aunts using it. My cousin pressured me and they wanted me to use skin bleaching products but my sister said you’re not using it because a lot of them experience the damages [from it].

Read the rest here. 

Issa Rae for #CreatorsOfColor

www.instagram.com/creatorsofcolor/

Issa Rae’s new HBO series is Insecure. Today she talked to Fresh Air’s Terry Gross about what made her want to write for television: 

“When I was younger I felt like I wanted to be a part of the writers’ rooms. I wanted to write my own show. I remember when the show Cosby came out, which was a different iteration of The Cosby Show, and I sent in a script for that. I remember going to my first live taping of a show in L.A. when we moved back when I was 11. [It] was Moesha,and I got to be in a live studio audience and watch what I say was the last regular black girl we had on TV. …