Have you ever done a basic Google search for “beautiful skin”, “perfect skin” or even “beautiful women?” Why is that you only see Caucasian women in the first few hundreds and when you do see a person of color it’s usually someone with straight hair or European features?
This led to rapid use of the hashtag, #FlexinMyComplexion. Although the hashtag has been around for awhile, @POCBeauty, a page that focuses on the Beauty of Color, recently asked their 26k followers to show the beauty of darker skinned complexions.
#FlexinMyComplexion had over 85K tweets within the first week of use. This essentially consisted of women of color posting selfies of themselves showing that beauty comes in their shade as well.
Darker skinned women want to show that they do exist and are just a beautiful as lighter skin.
In a statement from @POCBeauty to Clutch she says,
“Skin bleaching is a multi billion dollar business around the world. I think it’s important for women of color to know if they’re brown/dark they’re beautiful too and deserve to be noticed. Dark skin, in all backgrounds, is beautiful and should be recognized as so.”
Society often associates beauty with fairer skinned individuals. Why can’t darker skin get the same acknowledgement? But of course not everyone is happy with the widespread of #FlexinMyComplexion on social media. There were opinions that felt like it was discriminatory and should include everyone.
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White women began to use the hashtag to inquire about why it didn’t include them.
Somebody explain #FlexinMyComplexion ? Is it just for black girls? All girls?? Minority girls???
— Janelle Fox (@NoChillJanelle) August 15, 2015
@nochilljanelle black people are the only people that matter on twitter lol
— Michael (@NoChillEgg) August 15, 2015
Although anyone is entitled to use the hashtag, it was created with purpose to give darker skinned women a voice in a society that doesn’t think we’re beautiful.
It’s not to say we’re better than anyone but as a way to speak up and acknowledge the fact that we do exist and darker complexions should be seen more in the beauty industry.
Black is beautiful and it is important for that fact to get more recognition. Nothing is wrong with celebrating your color.
I hope that one day soon we’ll begin to do Google searches for “beautiful skin” and the page will be flooded with people of darker complexions.
Have you participated in the #FlexinMyComplexion social media movement?
