Storytelling Pucpr 2013 - Beleza negra/ black beauty

In my opinion it's still gonna be a struggle because it's such an ingreined thing in our society starting back when slavery first started you know, black people who were brought from Africa to become slaves were taught they were not as beautiful as their white masters or when masters would have families with the slaves and they would produce biracial or multiracial children, the multiracial biratial children would automatically be put in a situation where they would have a better life, because they would probably not to have to work in the field or they wouldn't have to live out in the slave quarters, they would atually have probably live in the big house with the master, and so that became a set up for this whole intercultural divide between african american people because of skin tone, the hair texture, and I think because we still struggle with it as a culture I've think that society as a whole is not going to be able to heal from it, until we can heal as a culture, until we can set aside our differences and still haven't been able to do that. African american people still not have been able to set aside their views about what beauty actually is I would think that because of the fact that our hair texture is so different it sets us apart and it shows our heritage, because our hair is so different than most other cultures, our body type is somewhat different than most cultures, too African american people have fuller lips, fuller nose... So the longest time african american women were taught that their hair was not beautifil, because of the fact that is really curly. So we began straightening our hair and once we started straightening our hair we didn't know how to go back to our curly hair, because it have been decades and centuries since we had then, you know, a situation were we had our natural hair. And so when natural started becoming more popular we didn't even know how to take care of our hair because we hadn't been wearing it for hundreds of years and do now it has come to a point were it's like we need to go back and educate ourselves about who we are, about how to take care of ourserlves in our own natural state I think it's against the culture because it makes a statement that OK, my naturally curly hair is not good enough, so I'm going to straighten it, to make it look different than it actually is and I think also too, we've got so caught up in a whole thing about our natural hair that some woman think that having their own natural hair would be more of a burden to them then having straight hair, because I don't know how to take care of it, how I'm gonna comb it, I don't know how to comb it if I put a straightener on it, I know how to comb with the straightener it's easier to work with, so they use that as an excuse as to why they won't explore their own natural hair Hair is a very complex thing, and I think just putting people in a category saying ok, you have straight hair, you have natural hair, meaning that you're more culturally conscious, means that is actually there's not a black and white, there's this gray line that is really hard to understand Why someone who is as powerful and as culturally conscious as Michelle Obama and Oprah, why do they still straighten their hair, I don't know, but does it mean that they're not a good representation of who we are, no, it doesn't mean that I think they're still a great representation of us