There were many objectives when Black Ballad was born. Some small and some big. One of the more ambitious tasks was to push mainstream magazines to include women of colour in their pages. Not only that, but to make these magazines show more varied and diverse images of black women than they have historically. Let’s be honest, besides Beyonce, magazines acted as though black women were an endangered species. Beyonce acted as the archetype for the black woman to magazines such as Glamour, Marie Claire and Vogue; she was black, so she should in theory, make other black women want to buy the magazine, but more importantly, she wasn’t too black to put white readers off. Let’s face it, if the Art Director lightened Beyonce enough she could pass for a white woman with a seriously great tan and those long loose blonde beach waves do no harm.
However, the purpose of this article isn't to dicuss or debate the racial ambiguity of Beyonce that may or may not work in favour of her and the Editors of mainstream magazines. This Editor's letter is to tell Editors of the Cosmpolitans, Glamours and other magazines that it is no longer and was never acceptable to glorify the beauty of white women at the expense of women of colour.
Lets start with Cosmopolitan and its post 21 Beauty Trends That Need To Die In 2015 - a beauty article that features four women of colour all under the R.I.P section. So let me clarify, for those who have no idea what I'm talking about, Cosmopolitan put together this post and only featured women of colour to highlight how bad they look. Meanwhile, 21 white women were praised for having flawless make-up and beauty that all women should take note of.