"Heartbreak" and "Dark Girls"
- By Tracy Ames
- Published May 29, 2011
Tracy Ames
Mrs. Ames is an international bestselling author of interracial erotic fiction and a former columnist for several newsletters and magazines.
A native of the San Francisco Bay Area, Tracy currently split time between Greenwich CT & New York City with her husband, children and a host of pets.
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I've post a new long verse poem entitled "Heartbreak". Enjoy...
PLEASE watch and share this short yet compelling documentary on skin color. The words 'nasty' and 'unclean' took my breath away. This came on the heels of a struggle with a cover artist who was determined to make my Sydney Cummings from ‘Beg Me’ lighter skinned.
Sydney, Monica (Fox & Hound), Erica (Kept), and Paula (Office Politics) are all dark complexioned. This wasn’t done consciously or as a rage against the establishment. I simply didn’t see anything wrong with having darker heroines.
I remember black children pulling my hair and calling it fake because “only light girls have long hair”. So one day I cut one of my ponytails off right there in front of them to prove it was my hair.
And I remember my teacher saying, “You’re not dark skin so why was that even necessary?”
What the hell!? She missed the point! No, I’m not Cicely Tyson but I’m damned sure not Beyonce; which I’m particularly proud of because that bitch gets on my nerves!
Anyway, back to Sydney….
A few months ago a girlfriend and I were going through potential cover models when I noticed she set aside the lighter skinned candidates, saying, although I mentioned Sydney’s dark complexion a few times, her strength led her to believe she was choc-o-licious (darker).
My friend isn’t the first person male/female, black/white to mention this. So why is there still a push, even from black graphic artists, to employ models lighter than paper bags? And in my case, how many other authors had he bullied into changing their minds?
Take Note: These misleading covers piss off the readers and make fools of neglectful/powerless writers.
Rant over.....
PLEASE watch and share this short yet compelling documentary on skin color. The words 'nasty' and 'unclean' took my breath away. This came on the heels of a struggle with a cover artist who was determined to make my Sydney Cummings from ‘Beg Me’ lighter skinned.
Sydney, Monica (Fox & Hound), Erica (Kept), and Paula (Office Politics) are all dark complexioned. This wasn’t done consciously or as a rage against the establishment. I simply didn’t see anything wrong with having darker heroines.
I remember black children pulling my hair and calling it fake because “only light girls have long hair”. So one day I cut one of my ponytails off right there in front of them to prove it was my hair.
And I remember my teacher saying, “You’re not dark skin so why was that even necessary?”
What the hell!? She missed the point! No, I’m not Cicely Tyson but I’m damned sure not Beyonce; which I’m particularly proud of because that bitch gets on my nerves!
Anyway, back to Sydney….
A few months ago a girlfriend and I were going through potential cover models when I noticed she set aside the lighter skinned candidates, saying, although I mentioned Sydney’s dark complexion a few times, her strength led her to believe she was choc-o-licious (darker).
My friend isn’t the first person male/female, black/white to mention this. So why is there still a push, even from black graphic artists, to employ models lighter than paper bags? And in my case, how many other authors had he bullied into changing their minds?
Take Note: These misleading covers piss off the readers and make fools of neglectful/powerless writers.
Rant over.....
Dark Girls: Preview from Bradinn French on Vimeo.
Miss Eliza my inspiration for Sydney Cummings. Dave's blog
Spread The Word
5 Responses to ""Heartbreak" and "Dark Girls"" 
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said this on 29 May 2011 8:51:04 AM CDT
I remember old timers recounting stories of brown bag parties at historically black colleges (if you were darker than a brown paper bag, you didn't get into the party). You would think that people going to college would be smarter than than to do that to their own. It a sad commentary on intra-racial racism, but it exists and the only way to get rid of it is to ask people to become consious of it and what comes out of their mouth. I guess it take one cover at a time.
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said this on 29 May 2011 12:53:32 PM CDT
This one really got to me because I honestly thought we were moving forward. And it’s the same BS all over again. In our family, it’s the darker skinned folks who are considered the pretty one because we’re so few and far between. My father is extremely fair skinned and he has blue eyes which two of my brothers and nephews have inherited. I have aunts who go to tanning beds. But it’s the dark skin everyone wants.
My Grandma said after she’d given birth the doctors kept my dad away from her because they didn’t believe she (a med. complexioned black woman (remember she’s half WASP)) could have a ‘white’ baby. All hell broke loose!! It’s a bit of a shock to see we’re still in that closed mentality. If people from other races can see our beauty, why can’t we? Hell, BC has staked his claim on a few sisters! Well, he has no concept of race...to him they're the ones with 'snakes in their hair'...aka braids. *SMDH* |
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said this on 29 May 2011 9:11:07 PM CDT
I think generally we've come a long way. Sometimes we are reminded that we have not come as far as we hoped. Some of this stuff is deeply ingrained. You bringing it to that her attention that she might have some "stuff" to deal with probably gave her some food for thought. There a certain degree of self de-programming that is involved.
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said this on 29 May 2011 11:40:44 PM CDT
Fun Fact that I learned in Psych Class: In an experiment, subjects watched a film. Spliced into that film, only a single frame every thirty seconds, were some Chinese Kaji symbols. Later on they were shown several Kaji symbols and asked which ones were prettier. The prettier ones were the ones that the subjects had been exposed to subliminally in the film earlier. The control group that hadn't had the subliminal images had a more varied view on which symbols were prettier.
What's the relevance? Exposure has a proven impact on our conception of beauty. The biggest lines of expusre to the general populace are TV, Movies, and Fashion, each one of which has a vested interest in our concepts of beauty being as narrow and as unnatural as possible. Another experiment took pictures of a hundred different people (one set male and one set female) and morphed them together, then shuffled the morphed pictures among the hundred face-pictures. The most attractive woman was the morphed woman and the most attractive man was the morphed man. The relevance here is that our concepts of beauty seem to seek out the idealized average of our exposure. This means that these same industries are caught in their own cycle. They pick the most beautiful, that influences the what society at large considers the baseline attractiveness, they have to narrow down what beauty is. Most of all this means holding humanity back when it comes to any more complex or inclusive view of beauty. The good news is we actually are moving forward. The bad news is that any fashion based industry is, by its very nature, going to lag behind. All else being equal, I'd just prefer everybody wear jeans and a t-shirt reading "(insert wearer's occupation here) do it (insert joke here)" and let that be the fashion. Once the President starts wearing a shirt reading "Presidents do it with all the power in the free world" looks would hold a lot less sway on us. |
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said this on 02 Jun 2011 11:43:39 AM CDT
Amazing video...As a dark skinned woman it was hard for me to finally be proud of my skin tone. I used to work with a lady from India and the same thing is happening in their culture.
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