March was the first time I saw the hashtag ‘blackout’ used. It was referenced in a Tumblr post with two pictures side by side, both of a young Black girl who was grinning modestly. Underneath was an original piece by her, ‘m.g.’, that used the word beautiful over and over.
What was so beautiful to her? Herself.
(Read her original piece here)
On March 6th thousands of Blacks, including ‘m.g’, posted selfies with the hashtag ‘blackout’ on Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr, confidently declaring themselves as beautiful. I was surprised by this image positivity because in our media beauty isn’t defined by variation and isn’t on a spectrum. What’s worse is that we as a culture accept that narrow definition of beauty by never challenging it. Blackout Day was a push to broaden the definition of what we, culturally, celebrate as beautiful.
Thus #blackout day became a day long celebration of diversity on social media. Its inspiration came from Tumblr user T’von who wrote to the colorofthefuture.org saying: “Of course I see a constant amount of Black celebrities but what about the regular people? Where is their shine?…I’m really sick and tired of seeing the ‘European standard of beauty’ prevail”. Once the promotional art got into the hands of influential Black activists like Chescaleigh, March 6th became about praising Blacks of all gender distinctions, shades, religions, shapes, and sizes on social media.
Tumblr user T’von is right, our media has become beauty complacent. Popular media tends to celebrate the traditional features of Black women and white women (i.e. Nicki Minaj or Iggy Azeala), but hardly celebrates Black women directly, nor does it celebrate their variation. Blackout day gave Blacks the opportunity to celebrate and declare themselves as beautiful in a public forum.
We would all like to think that we live in a society where everyone is equal and there are no biases, but white oppression still remains, just more subtly. It comes through with retorts like, “Why isn’t there a white history month?”, “Why isn’t there a white entertainment channel?”, “#Whiteout day would be racist”. Thus Blackout Day is not only a declaration, but also a reminder to us all of the media’s often flawed focus.