It just really aggravates me when people are obsessed with bringing others down. Deplorable. Beyonce's song "Flawless" in which she says "I woke up like this..."(and also features feminist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie) was meant as a mantra young women and girls could use for empowerment. We need to constantly reaffirm for ourselves that our beauty is timeless, effortless, and flawless in a world that has told us we are not. We need to do this because we live in a world in which if we google beauty, our faces are absent or scarce. I get that. What I don't get is that our moment almost always has to be snatched away by those who feel the need to constantly belittle, ridicule, and demean us. The kicker? A lot of the time, the hate created and circulated are by our own Black people. So I have to wake up to a meme with the caption "Bitches be like 'I woke up like this'" accompanied by a picture of an animal. Really Black people? Really? I understand that with everything, there will always be some kind of criticism, but why does it have to be to the point of shaming others?
I'll present to all my ladies a challenge. Take a picture of yourselves when you initially wake up. Smile. No filter. Caption it "I woke up like this" and include the hashtag #Iwokeuplikethis. Submit it to ourbellanaturale.tumblr.com/submit. Then share it on your social media. I want to make a compilation and archive it with the hashtag. Yes, people may laugh, but the joke will get old when they realize that true beauty is embracing your true self at anytime. Their ridicule wouldn't matter when they see that black girls and women love themselves beyond the negativity, ugliness, and self-hate around them. Soon we could re-write those memes to say "Real Queens say 'I woke up like this.'"
Stay flawless my queens.
Link to submit: http://ourbellanaturale.tumblr.com/submit
