Beauty and Brains

Black people, especially Black women, have been conditioned for centuries to despise their natural beauty. This truth is painfully evident in The Doll Test, conducted by psychologists Drs. Kenneth and Mamie Clark in the 1940s. They presented children with two dolls—one white, one Black—and asked them which doll they thought was beautiful, good, or worthy. Overwhelmingly, Black children chose the white doll. The Black doll was labeled ugly, bad, and undesirable. These weren’t just preferences—they were symptoms of systemic conditioning, a psychological weapon designed to make us internalize our own erasure.

Even now, generations later, we’re still unraveling the effects of that conditioning. Despite the progress we’ve made, the lie that our beauty and our worth are diminished by our Blackness still echoes through society. It’s a relentless, exhausting battle—one that doesn’t just strip us of our beauty but also forces us to choose between the different facets of our power. Society tells us we cannot be both beautiful and brilliant. We cannot be seen in our fullness because that fullness is a threat.

But what if we rejected that choice? What if we reclaimed beauty and brilliance as dual forces, as complementary aspects of our power?

Share

The idea that we have to choose between beauty and intellect, is one of the most insidious lies Black women are told. If we embrace our beauty, we’re dismissed as shallow, unserious, or vain. If we lean into our intellect, we’re asked to dull our radiance so that our intelligence can be “taken seriously.” It’s a trap that was never designed for our empowerment, but rather our containment. And too often, we internalize it. I see it now in my 8-year-old niece, who takes so much pride in her intellect (and rightfully so) but dismisses her beauty as if it’s irrelevant. She’s already seeing beauty as trivial, as something that doesn’t belong to her narrative of strength and smarts. It breaks my heart because I know where that path can lead.

As Black women, we’re taught to praise intellect as if it’s armor. We cling to academia as a lifeline, believing it will save us from the horrors of systemic oppression. But even in academic spaces, whether at PWIs or even HBCUs, we often encounter curriculums that erase our heritage, ignore our unique ways of thinking, and demand conformity. Academia rarely makes room for neurodivergence or for the spiritual and creative ways that many of us learn. It rewards assimilation, not liberation. This is why intellect alone is not enough—it must be paired with an embodied sense of self, one that doesn’t diminish beauty as “less than” but sees it as part of the whole.

Growing up in the 1990s, I was fortunate to see representations of beauty and brilliance that helped shape my understanding of what’s possible. Supermodels like Naomi Campbell and Tyra Banks were everywhere. Naomi wasn’t just a supermodel—she was a force. Seeing a deep-toned Black woman desired and celebrated globally was nothing short of revolutionary. Naomi knew she was beautiful, and she carried that knowing with an unapologetic confidence that was magnetic. But what made her even more extraordinary was her duality. Naomi didn’t exist only as a symbol of beauty—she moved in spaces of power, mingling with people like Nelson Mandela and showing that her beauty was a portal, not a limitation.

Tyra Banks was equally formative for me. She was visible in ways that made Black beauty mainstream, but her later critiques of beauty standards—especially through America’s Next Top Model—revealed the complexities of her legacy. Tyra perpetuated harmful ideas about beauty while also embodying the possibilities of what Black women could achieve in the industry. Together, Naomi and Tyra reflected the duality of beauty and brains—brilliant, powerful, and deeply human.

While Naomi and Tyra were shaping my dreams, women like Beverly Johnson and Bethann Hardison laid the foundation. Beverly Johnson became the first Black woman to grace the cover of Vogue in 1974, proving that our beauty belongs in spaces that once excluded us. Bethann Hardison, on the other hand, wielded her beauty and brilliance as tools for activism, challenging the fashion industry to do better. These women didn’t just break barriers; they created new ones, showing me and others that beauty and intellect together are transformative.

What makes the dominance of Eurocentric beauty standards so infuriating is how they erase Blackness while simultaneously stealing from it. Consider Jennifer Aniston’s “Rachel” haircut on Friends. It became a worldwide phenomenon, celebrated as revolutionary, but it wasn’t new. Black women had been rocking variations of the layered look for decades. Shows like Moesha, Hanging with Mr. Cooper & Living Single—the latter of which was colonized into Friends—showcased Black women creating and owning that style long before it was co-opted. My aunties wore versions of “The Rachel” because it was already part of our culture.

Or take curly hair. When Carrie Bradshaw of Sex and the City wore her natural curls, it was celebrated as quirky, bold, and chic. But when Black women wear their natural curls, we’re often labeled unprofessional or unkempt. The bias is so entrenched that laws like the CROWN Act (Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair) are necessary to protect us from discrimination in workplaces and schools. Think about that for a moment: Black women need legislation to ensure we won’t lose our jobs or face punishment for wearing our natural hair, while others get to call their curly hair edgy or chic. The same natural textures and styles that get us labeled “messy” or “unprofessional” are praised as bold and beautiful when worn by others. This isn’t just erasure—it’s theft.

Even Halle Berry, one of the most famous Black actresses of the 1990s, was forced into her now-iconic pixie cut because Hollywood didn’t have stylists who could care for her natural hair. Meanwhile, white actresses had entire teams designing their signature looks with care and attention. This is the erasure we face—our beauty is celebrated only when it’s removed from us and placed elsewhere, stripped of its origins and context.

Growing up, I was fortunate to have both beauty and brains instilled in me. My family taught me that I was more than my features, but they also taught me to honor those features as ancestral gifts. My beauty wasn’t something to be downplayed—it was sacred, a reflection of the people who came before me. And my intellect wasn’t separate from that beauty; it was all part of the same power. I was never forced to choose, and that gave me a foundation that I want to pass on to others, especially the next generation.

Share The Dark Divines

This is what I want my niece to know: Beauty is not trivial, and intellect is not the only measure of worth. Together, they create a force that disrupts narratives, shifts energy, and reminds the world of our power. When we reject the false choice between beauty and brains, we reclaim the fullness of who we are. We remind ourselves and each other that we are allowed to be radiant and brilliant, polished and profound.

This isn’t a boast about the systems we’ve been forced to navigate, nor is it a plea for validation. It’s a call to embrace the wholeness of our being. Black women deserve to take up space without apology, to walk into rooms as the fullest expression of who we are. We deserve to be seen as both beautiful and brilliant because together, they are transformative. Together, they are our power.

The world may try to define us, but we carry the blueprint. We are the blueprint.

Leave a comment