“If I had a superpower, it would be to turn white.”
“Your skin is prettier than ours.”
After hearing these quotes from extremely young girls during my first month living in Africa, I wondered why they would idealize fair skin when theirs is just as beautiful. Billboard advertisements for clothes and jewellery here commonly feature stunning black women, and the children are constantly surrounded by hard-working black adults who serve as consistent, positive role models. The Tanzanian flag incorporates the colour black to represent the Swahili peoples’ pride in the colour of their skin; yet, during my stay here, the children have displayed the (sometimes intense) desire to be white.
It wasn’t until I went to the movies to see The Incredibles 2 that I noticed how many young black children were at the local theatre to watch a film about superheroes—white superheroes.
The Incredibles is a typical kid’s movie—a white family with superpowers saving white bystanders, with a single black hero thrown in the mix for “diversity.” I started to think about how different the film would be if The Incredibles family were black and if Frozone was just the white sidekick.
In my head, I went through my list of princesses and superheroes I wanted to be like when I was younger. Not one was black. Tinkerbell, Superman, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty.
The hair I wanted to grow out and comb with a fork was a realistic dream because both The Little Mermaid and I have white girl hair.
So, what princess shows black girls how beautiful their hair can be? Which one shows how pretty and practical the standard shaved African head is?
Out of Rotten Tomatoes’ “Top 100 Kids and Family Movies”, zero starred a black character as the lead role. That statistic includes the two movies set in Africa. Black children have the option of either watching a white family heroically raise a safari animal or watching The Lion King, in which only the villains of the plot line have black fur.
Ants are black.
So why are the ants in the animated movie Antz coloured white?
If the statistic that 85% of the human brain develops before the age of five is accurate, having adequate representation in children’s media is a huge factor in determining a child’s self-esteem.
African girls and boys deserve to know how wonderful they are and how wonderful they will grow up to be. They deserve to know they have just as much chance at saving the world or meeting Prince Charming as the white child sitting next to them in the movie theatre. They deserve to know that African Beauty isn’t just a song.
They deserve black princesses.
Andrea O’Boyle
