Lupita Nyong'o: Beyond the Complexion

This year’s Academy Awards were an unprecedented victory for Blacks in entertainment. From the usually dapper red carpet attendees, to Pharrell’s nomination and performance of his hit song “Happy”. Click here to view his performance. To Steven McQueen’s win for Best Picture for 12 Years a Slave-the first win of a Black director in the Academy’s 86-year history. It seems like 2014 is off to a great start for so many African American’s in entertainment. This year however, belongs to Mexican-Kenyan born Lupita Nyong’o. The 31-year-old Yale Drama School graduate was just 3 weeks away from graduating when she was cast in McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave. The movie is based on a real-life memoir of a free man named Solomon Northup who was kidnapped and sold into slavery. Lupita Nyongo won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in her role as Patsey, a favored but desperately abused slave in the McQueen directed drama.

In her acceptance speech for the coveted golden Oscar statue, Lupita acknowledged the agony from which her storied catapult to fame was birthed. "It doesn’t escape me for one moment that so much joy in my life is due to so much pain in someone else’s,” she said in reference to Patsey, the slave she portrayed in the acclaimed film. Speaking to director Steve McQueen, she noted, “I’m certain that the dead are standing about you and watching and they are grateful and so am I”.

On February 27, at the Essence Black Women In Hollywood luncheon in Beverly Hills, Lupita gave a speech on black beauty. She read from a letter she received from a young fan who stated she was unhappy with herself until she saw the actress on the cover of a magazine. In her speech Lupita talked about the insecurities she had about herself as a teenager. She said, her self-loathing changed when she saw South Sudanese supermodel Alek Wek. Click here to view Lupita’s speech at the luncheon. 

As I listened to Lupita's heartfelt speech, transparently displaying a pain that so many young girls and women in the Black community face, it broke my heart. In our community there is still a stigma associated with being of darker complexion. To be light-skinned, for some is a badge of honor worn with so much pride that I have actually seen a license plate on a car brazenly stating, 'Lghtskn'. 

So many of the travesties that plague our community are engrained in our psyche dating back to slavery. For years we were made to feel ashamed of our curvaceous bodies, full-lips, wide nose, the vast spread of our hips, and sun-kissed skin. Some religious sects even believe that the darker ones’ skin, the closer they are to Satan’s spawn. The idea of what we now deem beautiful was adopted from slave owners and their wives. Lighter-skinned slaves were kept in the house. More often than not, the lighter a slave's skin the more favored they were. Some were used only as “good time girls” when their masters’ felt the animalistic nature to rape or sodomize. Centuries of slavery have drifted into the memories of history only to be memorialized through photographs, books, poetry, and film. Yet we are still encapsulated by the authoritarianism of what society views as beauty. It continues to be an uphill battle to eradicate the insecurities associated with complexion. 

Nigerian 'pop star' Dencia is the epitome of the manipulation of a simple-mind, easily persuaded to believe that lighter skin directly relates to beauty. The skin bleaching cream she uses was mentioned in the fan letter Lupita read at the Essence luncheon. It has transformed her from a brown-skin beauty to the female version of Dave Chappelle's character, Chuck Taylor.

When there are so few positive images of Black women on television, I’m thankful that Lupita is being notarized in such a way that her beauty, grace and elegance are undeniable. The only images that we have other than those like Soledad O’Brien and Tamron Hall, both in broadcasting, are represented through Atlanta Housewives, Being May Jane and Scandal. Excluding Atlanta Housewives for a moment, Mary Jane and Olivia Pope are telematic depictions that ones’ value as a woman is associated only with what lies between the legs. Although these roles are played by beautiful, brown-skinned, intelligent women (on and off-screen) they represent the notion that love, promotion and acceptance are determined in large part by ones sexuality. I mentioned Atlanta Housewives because more so now than ever, the petty bickering has escalated to violence. Once again perpetuating the stereotype that Black women are angry and bitter.

So again, I welcome the rich-hued, Yale graduate whose physical beauty is intertwined with her compassion to help a young, dark-skin girl realize that she can author her own story-climbing the realms of success unhinged from the “far away gatekeepers of beauty”.

I do not claim ownership to the above images.