That black women’s bodies are problematic manifests in several flash points, such as hair, but when embodied by white women these flash points are neutralized, even admired. Case in point: Marie Claire praised Kylie Jenner’s “epic” cornrows while black women are still discriminated against in the workplace for wearing such a hairstyle. In February 2013, the international fashion magazine Numéro did an editorial spread called “African Queen,” in which the lily-white model Ondria Hardin was in blackface. Black skin and hair are considered “epic” and regal as long as they are not found on the black female body, because that kind of authenticity is not the kind of beauty that mainstream culture values. A simple Google search for “beautiful women” reveals a proliferation of white women.
Some may ask how we can demonize Dolezal when black women try to “look white,” with weaves that look nothing like their natural hair texture, or blue contacts. The answer is that when there is no equality, there cannot be equivalency. In other words, we cannot judge black and white women in the same way. Although black women are pressured to be as close to the white ideal as possible, they can never call themselves white. There are benefits to looking “respectable”—a chance at getting certain jobs, moving in and out of elite circles, vast networks, and so on—but like a black child who places her face through a cutout on top of a white body at a carnival or amusement park, a black woman with a Russian weave and baby-blue contacts will never be viewed as a white woman. She will be seen as a black woman with a Russian weave and baby-blue contacts. We all know that we cannot identify as something that we can never inherently be.
Dolezal, on the other hand, managed to embody whiteness, white womanhood, in the guise of black womanhood. Only a white woman could pose as a black woman and not be immediately laughed out of town. Rachel Dolezal’s massive media blitz after she was “outed,” everywhere from MSNBC to Vanity Fair, was no accident. Although Dolezal darkened her skin, she still inhabits a white female body and, as such, possesses the privilege to take black female characteristics and subsequently become a newsworthy subject. While actual black women are stigmatized for the bodies that we live in, when Rachel Dolezal attempts to wear our bodies as a kind of costume, she becomes intellectualized. Only a white woman could inspire others to discuss if races can be switched, and when someone like Rachel Dolezal does so, she is protected—even defended. It is true that she was also condemned and mocked, but this backlash was followed with a book deal and massive press junket, not obscurity. Dolezal is not an innovator. She’s just carrying on tradition. In the late nineteenth century, white women wore bustles to make their buttocks look bigger than they were. Hottentot Venus influenced this style, and yet what was natural on her was seen as disgusting; what was artificial on white women was seen as a sign of luxury. The offense does not lie only in the imitation itself, but also in the reception of black women’s body parts, which are only coveted once a white woman decides that she wants them for herself. Black women cannot reappropriate from white women and be equally desired. White women are not pressured to look like anyone else but themselves. Yet when they want to look like black women, they still are seen as both original and acceptable. Under the white gaze, the black body cannot exist without white people encroaching upon our right to be. We are like bendy straws, able to curve and snap depending on a white person’s curiosity. We are not black “people” on our own, but rather the opposite of whiteness. I am beyond questioning if all of this is mere coincidence. Because of history and current pop culture references, it seems as if it’s all by design, which makes the discussions around beauty—who gets to own and determine it—very difficult and painful.
When I was growing up, every black girl I knew had a Barbie—a blonde-haired, blue-eyed, perfect-white-woman prototype. I hated dolls; their still eyes made me feel like I was always being watched, and I much preferred stuffed animals. Still, I saw girls carrying Barbie everywhere because Barbie was a hot commodity back then. But even more than that, she was a status symbol: a small piece of white luxury available for purchase. If you bought her, you, too, could share in that counterfeit ideal. Why do you think you don’t see many white girls with black dolls? I saw a video online of two white girls having a fit when they received black dolls for Christmas. Black dolls don’t represent beauty, luxury, and perfection. These things are for white girls, not black girls.
Like the girls I grew up with, Claudia MacTeer in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye treasures a “blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll.” The possession of one, as she says, is what every little girl in the world, whether she be black or white, wants. Black and white girls want the same white doll. Only problem is, white girls stare at Barbies and see potential. Black girls stare at white dolls and see impossibility. This is what stirs Claudia to ask, “What made people look at them and say, ‘Awwwww,’ but not for me?” Her quandary can only be solved if she destroys a white doll, a symbol of white womanhood. White women can weave magic around others in a way that she cannot.
In our patriarchal culture, both white and black women have to fight for the reclamation of their bodies. But we cannot group all women together under the patriarchy without considering race, which further stigmatizes us as black women but provides a buffer for white women.
Their womanhood does not eliminate their whiteness. We as black women are doubly disenfranchised in the throes of two spaces, race and gender, and there is no solace. Toni Morrison once said that “the black woman has nothing to fall back on: not maleness, not whiteness, not ladyhood, not anything. And out of the profound desolation of her reality, she may very well have invented herself.” Morrison’s predecessor Zora Neale Hurston wrote in Their Eyes Were Watching God that black women are “de mule uh de world.” The offspring of a male donkey and a female horse, a mule is not quite one, not quite the other. Mules require less sustenance and support than horses. Their hooves are much harder, which helps to ward off disease and infection, and they have thicker skin. Black women, like mules, have always had much less support and a greater burden. And our efforts rarely receive acknowledgment; if they do, it is only as footnotes on our cultural narrative. This is why the idea of the Strong Black Woman is sweet in sound but damaging in effect.