It’s a Friday night. Like many Trojans, I have decided to go out to a party with a few friends. We walk about 15 minutes and arrive at a random frat house decked out to match a vague theme. It doesn’t matter: Our goal is to party. The night seemingly goes off without a hitch and we’re all having a good time. I look across the crowd of dancing bodies and spot someone cute. They see me too.

I think we’re hitting it off. We dance, laugh and get to know each other. Then the usual happens: they find someone “prettier.” The pretty someone in question is a blonde, white girl. She’s probably fun and super cool — I can even admit that she is pretty — but why does this always happen?

This question has been haunting me since I was little. When I drew myself in elementary school, I would have blonde hair and blue eyes — features I would kill for. The popular girls in grade school were always the same shade of dirty blonde and usually had blue or green eyes.

I took pride in my personality: I was funny, smart and “cool enough” for my white peers. But whenever it came to school dances or first kisses, I was “undesirable.” In high school, I followed trends and “fixed” the parts of myself I noticed were the least attractive, but even after all that work, I was still not seen as equal. I was seen as attractive despite my race.

I never quite fit in my small suburban town, surrounded by white girls, but I thought that would finally change once I got to USC — a university that prides itself on diversity. Despite surrounding myself with people of color, I still find myself being second-best to white girls when it comes to dating and romance.

An article from Vogue Business discusses how beauty standards and commercialized beauty are all rooted in white supremacy; white European women have been held in the media as the pinnacle of beauty since the days of colonization. While beauty trends and standards are forever changing, especially in the age of social media, whiteness has consistently stayed the ideal.

Methods like chemical hair-straightening and skin bleaching have been marketed towards people of color to get them closer to the Western beauty ideal, and closer to the “whiteness” media tells us to aspire to. Even with all of these harmful methods of assimilation, the beauty of women of color has always been secondary to that of white women. In a society fueled by white supremacy, women of color will always find themselves in a losing battle because of the centuries of favor and advantage white women were given.

Of course, the people at parties are not actively trying to exercise white supremacist ideologies (at least I’d hope not), but it’s hard to ignore the constant attention and praise that white women get in social situations, seemingly just for being a member of their race.

Even within communities of color, those with lighter skin and Eurocentric features are favored, and those with proximity to whiteness are seen as desirable commodities. Colorism — the prejudice based on one’s skin tone — is still prevalent within communities of color; dark-skinned Black women are less likely to be married than light-skinned Black women.

White women are more likely to be perceived as beautiful compared to Black women because of the negative stereotypes used against Black women for centuries. During the transatlantic slave trade and well after, many stereotypes were created toward Black people to justify the dehumanization they endured. Black men were painted to look aggressive, dominant and uber-masculine. Similarly, Black women were depicted as angry, loud and overtly sexual.

These stereotypes were utilized to justify Black people’s status as slaves — putting them in positions where they needed to be “tamed” by white people.
A common view suggests Black women are seen as more masculine and dominant, while their white counterparts are seen as more feminine and docile. While all of these stereotypes are rooted in patriarchal attitudes, white women are not dehumanized to the extent that Black women are. White women are just seen as the standard for womanhood, so women of color are automatically seen as subsets of white womanhood.

I’ve worked to unlearn all of these ideas and love myself, but I still notice that when I get complimented, it always circles back to my race. I can be the most attractive person in the world, but it’s all despite my race. We all should work to unlearn the importance of whiteness pertaining to our perception of beauty — in ourselves and in others.