Face Value - the beauty of Alek Wek - Brief Article

Ebony, March, 1999 by Laura B. Randolph

SHE said she didn't mean it. She said she doesn't know what got into her to make her say such a thing. She said it isn't even the way she really feels--that when she blurted it out, she was just tired and irritable and PMSing.

She is a young Sister I met a few weeks ago at the hair salon. As the two of us were sitting under the dryer waiting for the avocado conditioner to do its thing, we both reached for the Elle magazine on the table in front of US.

"Doesn't this just gall you?" my under-30, under-the-hair-dryer neighbor asked in disgust.

I said, "Does what gall me?" uncertain of what the young Sister was asking me.

"When they finally put a Black woman on the cover," she answered, pointing to the cover model and pressing the magazine in my hand, "they pick the homeliest one they can find."

I was so stunned you could have knocked me over with a feather. The woman this young Sister was calling homely was African model Alek Wek, a Sudanese refugee who made her U.S. modeling debut a few years ago and has since become one of the most sought-after models in the business.

What, I wondered, were my options here? Tell this young Sister that her hair rollers were clearly wound too tight and roll my eyes in disgust? Juvenile and unproductive. Ask her to keep her opinions to herself until she had developed enough sense and self-esteem to formulate an intelligent one? Churlish and mean-spirited. Say nothing, bury my head in the magazine, and seethe quietly? Maybe, but somebody needed to tell this young woman how noxious and narrow-minded her standard of beauty is.

So I decided to tell the young Sister, as calmly as I could, why a single (read: European) standard of beauty is so detrimental to Black folks in general and Black women in particular. But first, one by one, I point out Wek's extraordinary accomplishments: In addition to her magazine covers, Wek has modeled for scores of top designers, strutted her stuff in major fashion shows all over Europe and the U.S., even opened for Ralph Lauren. Then I told her that while it is true that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, Wek is many things--sleek, stunning, stop-and-stare striking--but homely isn't one of them.

On the contrary, I explained, Alek Wek is beauty--Black beauty, African beauty, our people's beauty--in all its glory. Her skin is as dark as the night sky. Her hair is short, natural and, from the looks of it, has never been exposed to a perm or a pressing comb. Her lips are prominent and fabulously full. Ditto her nose and her behind.

I must have been getting loud because, before it was time to rinse out the conditioner, the young Sister recanted her homely assessment, blaming it on a bad case of PMS, although I suspect her sudden change of heart had more to do with the hot curling iron I was holding than cramps or bloating.

While I was genuinely shocked by the Sister's Wek-is-so-homely declaration, I guess I really shouldn't have been. Just a few days earlier, I read an interview given by Alfre Woodard in which she said it wasn't until 12 years ago when she took a trip to Zimbabwe where African men told her she was attractive that she realized she was.

"I felt like starting a fund to have every one of my nieces visit Africa immediately," she said of the life-changing experience. Now, Woodard says, "I gotta strike a blow for freedom. I want little girls, all these very deep and Africanic-looking women to sashay and say, `Yeah, I look good.'"

So do I, Alfre. But they won't until we Black folks learn to see, prize and relish our beauty. From our round fannies to our every shade of beige, black and brown trees. From our ample hips to our amazing lips. They won't until we accept at face value the value of our faces.

I hope that day is coming soon. Like a lot of Sisters, especially those with young daughters, I am so sick of the beauty myth, the conventionalized, mass-marketed idea of female attractiveness as young, thin, fair-skinned with Anglo features. As if only skinny, 22-year-olds with long straight hair are beautiful and sexy.

And it's up to us to change it. In a society where all things are driven by consensus, our insistence that beauty comes in all shapes, shades and sizes is not only important, it's critical. Which is why, as I told the young Sister in the beauty shop, we should be cheering Alek Wek's success. Not only is she truly beautiful, whenever she, or a woman who looks like her, graces a magazine cover or strolls down a runway, she reminds us--and every little Black girl who sees her--how diverse the concept of beauty is, how full of possibilities.

Most important, Wek reminds us of the secret of all beautiful women, something my mother told me a long time ago: Be who you are, and have style.