valencia Writes

By Valencia Jermaine

I, like millions of other people, thought of Christopher Robert Evans as my Celebrity Boyfriend. It’s just a harmless fantasy. We all know we’ll never meet him, and we accept that as reality. That’s fine. It was nice to have the fantasy, and in this fantasy it is at least humanly possible that he could be attracted to someone like me, a black woman.

I was not alone in this fantasy. Chris seemed to have many of us black women in a proverbial choke hold for years. He was given the middle name “Jamal” by some women because of his liberal political stances and his swagger. However, I can no longer deny the reality: we are definitely not his type. I’m basing that assumption on every woman he’s ever dated and every single one of his romantic leading ladies. NONE of them were black women and none were women of color.

Chris Evans was just named The Sexiest Man Alive by People Magazine. He can have literally ANY woman he wants. Right after this information broke, we got word that he’s dating a Portuguese actress who looks very similar to all the other women he’s dated. He clearly has a type. My sisters: it appears we’re not it.

For me to maintain the fantasy, it must at least bear some teeny, tiny basis in reality. It must be statistically possible, even though it will never happen on or off screen. This needs to be true for all celebrity book boyfriends, not just Mr. Evans.

Look, I’m not blaming Chris at all. I’m happy that he’s happy. We all have a type in some way, shape or form. We’d prefer a certain height, a certain body type, a certain facial feature, etc. It’s human nature. We like what we like, and our preferences are based in our culture, our geographic location, our society, the media, and everything around us.

Yet when it comes to black women, things are a little different. We’re not considered the standard of beauty. At all. We’re not featured on beauty magazines as much as our white or European counterparts. We’re not considered as often when it comes to beauty products: makeup, hair, health products, etc. We’re the last to be taken into consideration when it comes to product development unless it is to specifically cater to our market, and usually we’re the last to be involved in the development of those products, too.

I find all this ironic since our individual features tend to be more widely accepted than the black women who naturally possess them. Women are getting butt lifts, lip injections, and skin bronzing products to imitate parts of us, but they know they don’t want to be one of us on a full-time basis. There is such a thing as “Blackfishing” if you can believe it. Blackfishing is defined as when people change their appearance with makeup, cosmetic surgery, or digital editing to appear black. (Definition from CNN.)

It wouldn’t be such an outrage for me if I didn’t know for a fact that black women are gorgeous inside and out and that we deserve to be considered in an expanding catalog of beauty, not just in America but around the world. How can you like full lips, wide hips, thick thighs, but not like us? It’s frustrating.

We are the first judged and the least heard. We are the least loved and protected. Regardless of what we achieve personally and/or professionally, we must continue to fight, and scratch, and claw our way into society just to be seen. Then when we are seen, it’s with skeptical eyes. We must walk a fine line every day just to keep from being lumped into the stereotype of angry black woman. We’re always “too” something. Too black.  Too smart. Too assertive. To aggressive. Too opinionated. Too much attitude.

Yet we’re never considered too pretty.

We’re never too protected.

We’re never too loved.

And that’s a damned shame.

Because no one will love you harder than a black woman. No one will support you more than a black woman. No one will lift you up, like a black woman. No one will hype you up like a black woman. No one will pray harder for you than a black woman.

Hell, we have whole ass black men coming onto social media just to announce to the world how they don’t want to date black women, and although we don’t want those men anyway, it does beg the question of why they do it. Has society sold them a bag of goods that says that we are “too much” of something that they aren’t going to like? Too much of something that they don’t need or want?

Look, if you love a person for who they are, wonderful. I support that.

But to exclude an entire group of people because society says they’re not worthy of being considered appealing, that’s where it’s not right, in my humble opinion.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but this 49-year-old black woman grew up in the 1980s. I wanted long hair. I wanted straight hair. I wanted a smaller nose. I thought I was ugly. I was called ugly. I believed it for a very long time. If I’m being completely honest, sometimes I still believe it, and that’s sad for so many reasons. I’m hoping that future generations of black women don’t go to bed ever thinking they’re anything less than gorgeous and extraordinary in every way because that’s how God made them.

And while we shouldn’t have to depend on society to confirm our beauty, we still must live and work in society. We still deserve love and respect. We deserve support and protection. We deserve to be seen as desirable.

That’s just my take on all of this.

As far as Chris Evans is concerned, I’m going to let the fantasy die, and wish him well in his relationship.