COURTNEY YATES

Drake in Detroit

“Upkeep”

In a society unapologetic for its rigid hegemonic beauty standards, Upkeep serves as a representation of the relationship between a woman of color and the system (economy, zeitgeist, etc.) that has created and upholds her sense of self. I asked myself, “Who told me what I love about myself? Who told me what to change?”

Today’s expectations of black female bodies are inseparable from the history of American Slavery. I find this particularly in the damaging black hierarchy based on skin tone spawning from the rape and sexualization of enslaved women and the subsequent and contemporary commodification of racial identity through beauty products that assist in the strive for distant, often unachievable, Eurocentric features. In the strive for hair that doesn’t spring naturally from our heads or the features belonging to no one in our families, we experience a process of upkeep, like women of all races, but one that is intentionally unending, a race with an unreachable finish line. Do not forget who makes money off of the hair relaxer and the skin bleach—do not forget who makes money of off all beauty and fashion industry, industries that routinely forget to represent us. To understand that this is not an unfortunate fall of the cards, that it is not a trending Twitter hashtag originating in 2013 (#LightSkinVSDarkSkin), to understand the economic benefits to the struggle of black girls and their bodies is to understand the weight of the fight to love yourself when the media, the economy, and the people around you subconsciously do not. This takes unimaginable effort and an infinite existence of upkeep.

The “light-skinned” subject and the white man’s hand are not coincidence.