On Beauty

A racist blog on Psychology Today has provoked a heated debate about beauty, complexion and marginalisation, writes Lihle Z Mtshali

The most contested terrain in the world now is not some oil-rich country in the Middle East - it is black beauty. Everybody, their mama and their family cat think they are the authority on what characterises the beauty of a black woman.

As if the world's warped opinions and stereotypes of us were not bad enough, in walks a London School of Economics professor, Dr Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist, with what he calls scientific research showing that black women are uglier than women of other races.

Kanazawa, a controversial Japanese academic who is based in the UK, published a blog post entitled "Why Are African-American Women Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women, But Black Men Are Rated Better Looking Than Other Men?" on Psychology Today's website last month.

He based his conclusions on a 2001 survey of white, Asian, black and native American men and women, who were asked to rate each other's attractiveness based on photos. According to the survey, which was published in Intelligent, a US psychology journal, black women scored lowest and Asian women had the highest scores.

It is not clear if Kanazawa was part of the initial survey, but he nonetheless took the results and sought to give his own reasons why people voted the way they did.

He said the reason why black women had scored the lowest in the survey was because "Africans on average have higher levels of testosterone than other races ... (and) women with higher levels of testosterone also have more masculine features and are therefore less physically attractive".

The blog post immediately sparked an international race row, with thousands of outraged people bombarding Psychology Today's editorial team with petitions to remove Kanazawa's post. A Facebook page demanding he be dismissed from the London School of Economics was also put up.

The post drew the attention of Whoopi Goldberg and Sherrie Shepherd of the popular daytime talk show, The View. Goldberg pointed out that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" and Shepherd said that such comments could be detrimental to young black women who could take the study as the truth about who they are.

The post was removed, but not before it had gone around the world. A week after it had first appeared, Kaja Perina, editor-in-chief of Psychology Today, issued an apology in a statement, saying: "Last week, a blog post about race and appearance by Satoshi Kanazawa was published - and promptly removed - from this site.

"We deeply apologise for the pain and offence that this post caused. Psychology Today's mission is to inform the public, not to provide a platform for inflammatory and offensive material. Psychology Today does not tolerate racism or prejudice of any sort.

"The post was not approved by Psychology Today, but we take full responsibility for its publication on our site. We have taken measures to ensure that such an incident does not occur again. Again, we are deeply sorry for the hurt that this post caused."

Psychology Today fired Kanazawa on June1. He has apparently also been asked to resign from the London School of Economics.

But Kanazawa should not have been given the platform to be a guest blogger on Psychology Today in the first place, said New York-based psychologist Dr Scyatta Wallace, an African-American who also lectures at St John's University in Queens, New York.

Wallace also works with singer Mary J Blige on her Foundation for the Advancement of Women Now (Ffawn) and has helped the foundation develop a programme to empower black girls and young women.

"I was surprised that Psychology Today had invited Kanazawa as a guest blogger because when you do research on him, you will find that he has been criticised by people in his own field for other studies he's done in the past.

"I know that in this country we are big on free press and academic freedom, but I do hope that in the future they will do a better job at picking their bloggers," said Wallace.

The controversy in Kanazawa's blog post lay in how he had chosen to interpret existing research, she said. "There are a lot of other ways he could have interpreted the survey that would have been more scientifically sound."

Kanazawa is no stranger to controversy. An academic paper he published in 2006 suggested that the poor health of some sub-Saharan Africans was the result of low IQ, and not poverty.

Music and entertainment business executive Thembisa Mshaka, who is also author of Put Your Dreams First, Handle Your Entertainment Business, said she was not surprised by the outrage.

"What is more insidious are the images that come across that are part of the larger landscape. That is what we as a community should be paying attention to and educating our kids about," said Mshaka.

TV, magazines, movies, music videos and now scholars were either erasing or degrading black women, she said.

"If you look at music videos now, there is an erasure of black women of a certain complexion. There seems to be a paper-bag test going on with the casting of the women in these videos. If the woman appearing in the music video is darker than a paper bag, she is more likely to be objectified, as opposed to the lighter-skinned one who would be worshipped."

This was because black people were reaching for the Westernised beauty ideal, without even realising they were doing so - and "studies" such as Kanazawa's were not helping, said Mshaka.

The music business wasn't always that way, she said. In the days of DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, before Will Smith became a movie star, they featured a "chocolate lady" as Smith's love interest.

"But these days, they've even gone past the light-skinned African-American and are now going for the exotic Latina or the bodacious white girl who has had implants so she can have the curvaceous body of a black woman but with white skin and long, straight hair."

She said it was all this negativity that went to the heart of dividing women of colour, making it even more difficult for black love to be able to flourish, and poisoning the environment.

"Then you have young black boys seeing grown black men choosing women who don't look anything like their mothers or sisters and, without knowing why, they will also do the same," said Mshaka.

One thing we can all agree on is that there is no consensus on the definition of the word "attractive". Therefore Kanazawa's theories can be considered to be fundamentally flawed.

Cover Girls

Major fashion magazines set the standard for what is considered beautiful, but black women do not appear to have a place in the magazines' concept of beauty and high fashion. I set out to find 10 black women who made headlines by being the first to grace the covers of the top fashion magazines, but could only find seven.

Magazines such as Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Elle and Marie Claire have received a lot of criticism for not featuring enough black cover girls. Cosmopolitan, for example, in 151 issues, from January 1999 to June 2011, has only had four covers with black women - Halle Berry in December 2002; Beyoncé in February 2006 and December 2007; and Rihanna in March 2008. (Beyoncé, Oprah Winfrey, Berry, Michelle Obama and Rihanna have all graced the cover of Vogue.)

1 The first fashion magazine appeared in France in 1672, but the first cover with a black woman on it would come only 293 years later, in January 1965, when a sketch of model Donyale Luna appeared on Harper's Bazaar. In March 1966, Luna became the first African-American model on the cover of British Vogue.

2 After Luna, a student, Katiti Kironde, appeared on the cover of Glamour Magazine in August 1968 for the magazine's contest, "Top 10 best-dressed college girls".

3 A decade later American Vogue featured model Beverly Johnson on the cover in August 1974. (Johnson was also the first black model on the cover of French Elle in 1975).

4 The September issues of fashion magazines are usually the biggest of the year. In 1989, Naomi Campbell became the first black woman on the cover of the Vogue September issue. Berry was on the magazine's September cover in 2010.

5 The Swimsuit Issue of Sports Illustrated is known to be the magazine's bestselling issue and sells over one million copies. In February 1997, supermodel Tyra Banks was the first black model to pose solo on the cover.

6 Sudanese model Alek Wek was the first African to be featured in American Elle in November 1997.

7 From Russian magazines to Rolling Stone, singer Rihanna is no stranger to magazine covers, but in April this year she became the youngest black woman to grace the cover of American Vogue.