outsidethebeautybox

[outsidethebeautybox]

Highlight: I'm getting berry bitty/Thumbelina vibes

She's a berry bitty queen with berry big possibilities. A manocki illustration. This friend be slaying.

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A post shared by 𝐌𝐀𝐍𝐎𝐍 (@manocki)

[outsidethebeautybox]

Manifesting a Beautiful Ending

For some unfathomable reason, it seems that modern society has decided to start ‘ranking’ racism, and we have decided that some kinds of racism are ‘not that bad.’

While most people in the western world have (finally) acknowledged that racism is very wrong when directed toward black people, many many people still seem to think it’s acceptable to be racist toward white people and other more specific ethnic groups. 

It’s absolutely baffling. 

Bigotry is always wrong, no matter who you hate. And yet, you don’t have to look far to find people making harsh or unkind statements about people of European descent. Many people in this diaspora even make disparaging comments about themselves. It feels like some kind of dichotomous charade - they play along with the prevailing idea that white people are ‘the enemy’ so that people of color will feel more comfortable around them. 

It is 100% possible to say “I’m not a white supremasist” without disrespecting your diaspora, your family and your loved ones. Self-hate is no better than any other kind of hate. 

Maybe this is all hard for me to wrap my head around because of MY ancestry. As a hispanic, I’m white, indigenous, and african by blood. I can’t logically villainize anyone without villainizing myself, and I have no interest in doing either.

Some of my grandfathers were conquerors. Some of my contemporaries are criminals. But that’s not true of ALL of us and we are not defined by anyone’s actions but our own. 

It is just plain wrong (period, point blank) to dislike anyone because of a few strands of DNA they never asked for and can’t control.

In my perfect world, we can all just get over these ridiculous ethnic boundaries and learn to love each other.

Unfortunately, my perfect world doesn’t exist, and sometimes people don’t even want to be civil to each other.

As some of you may remember, earlier in 2024, I tried to make a webcomic with a Eurasian (Filipino and white American) illustrator. This comic was about a Korean painter and an African American school teacher.

While the illustrator didn’t seem to have any problem with African Americans, we had been working together for a few weeks when she expressed a rather negative attitude toward Koreans.

To me, it felt random, and a little confusing. She claimed she’d had Korean friends before, but also said she “wasn’t a fan of Koreans.”

In my mind, those concepts can’t coexist. If you love someone, you have to love all of them.

You can’t love me and hate the blood in my veins, so neither can you love someone while expressing unwarranted dislike for their ethnicity at large.

To be fair, I’m Dominican and African American, so I don’t know much about racial tensions between Koreans and Filipinos, if that’s a ‘thing.’ This artist told me that Koreans are often unkind to Filipinos, but I also know there is a statue in Yeoncheon, South Korea, which was built in honor of Filipino soldiers who fought in the Korean war.

Some people will be cruel. Some people will be kind. Some will show disrespect. Some will show love and gratitude. You can’t pass judgement on someone because of their ethnicity. The only fair way to interact with anyone is to remember that they are an individual.

We are the sum of our own actions, not anyone else’s.

Again, maybe it’s because of MY ancestry. 

I’m black. There is no culture (that I know of) with a history of treating my people kindly. 

Some people of European descent enslaved and brutalized my people, especially in the Americas. To this very day (some) Filipinos are still cruel to their own brothers and sisters for having dark skin or curly hair. I have both traits, but I choose not to pass judgement on any individual because certain other individuals choose to be unkind.

No matter what our diasporas becomes known for, we each have a chance to be different.

I eventually stopped working with this artist, and when she sent her ‘break up’ message, she mentioned that she didn’t like that the story we were making was about Koreans.

It’s mind-boggling to me that she didn’t realize this was racism, front and center.

There is no excuse for it. It cannot be justified. It is always wrong, and I will always oppose it, because we all deserve a chance to express ourselves without fear of being profiled for the color of our skin, the texture of our hair, or the shape of our eyes.

I’ve mentioned it before and I’ll say it again: I think art can be a form of self healing. Through writing we can learn to love ourselves and others. We can put bandaids on centuries of racial tension, colonization, and abuse - manifesting beauty and positivity, even if we’ve never experienced them (yet.)

I've never had a pleasant experience with a Filipino person. I've also only ever known two Filipinos, and I refuse to judge the whole culture on the behavior of two people. I still listen to (and love) Amie Chan, Lyn Lapid, and Mico. I still write Filipino characters in my stories (I actually just created another one last week) From quirky-cute female leads to sarcastic superheroes, I manifest love through my decision to positively represent a diaspora that has never been kind to me.

Maybe someday things will be different.

It’s my job to bring that day a little closer by choosing love instead of hate and bigotry.

I hope that, someday, we’ll live in a world where racism ceases to exist. We’ll all go ‘color blind’ and people will just be people, without extra adjectives or labels.

For now, I choose to believe there are beautiful people hiding beneath every label and umbrella term. I’m going to draw them. I’m going to write about them. I’m going to keep looking for them.

If you want beauty, you will always be able to find it. If you want hurt and hatred, you will always be able to find it.

The night sky is as dark and foreboding as anything, but it’s also full of stars.

[outsidethebeautybox]

Your artistic insight is incredible, and I'm impressed by your creativity. I'd like to buy some of your photographs. Please message me to negotiate.

Which photographs do you want to purchase or use?

[outsidethebeautybox]

Highlight: Ugh, why is this so relatable?

Anyone else getting "Hair Love" vibes? Shout out to snooliensart. This picture is the best XD.

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A post shared by ☆ teegs ☆ (@snooliensart)

I LOVE cartoons and cartoony art.

[outsidethebeautybox]

Is Same Face Syndrome a Good Hack or Just Disrespectful?

The webcomic world has been hit by a pandemic we artists call “same face syndrome.”

In a nutshell, ‘same face syndrome’ is when most (or all) of the characters in a comic have the same head shape and facial features. When this happens, the only distinguishing features are the character’s haircuts/colors, eye colors, and skin tones. Sometimes their heights/body types make them stand out as well, but oftentimes, there is one set body type for all adult females and another (1) for all adult males.

The main motivation behind same face syndrome is a need for efficiency. People get used to drawing faces one specific way, and artists are able to streamline their processes when they stay in their comfort zones.

The question is, is this hack beneficial or disrespectful?

Here’s the thing: People from different ethnic groups have unique facial features that won’t be represented if all the characters are drawn with the same face. Ethnic diversity aside, even people within the same ethnicity often have extremely different facial features from each other.

If we give every character the same face, we run the risk of turning individuals into cliches and fail to represent any diaspora properly.

There may be stories where this doesn’t matter that much, but just in general, I think it’s topic worth careful consideration.

Is sacrificing individuality for the sake of efficiency the right decision to make in this scenario?

There are a thousand nuances involved in the process of making EVERY story ever illustrated, so I’ll refrain from making a blanketed statement. However, there are a few instances I can point out, where I feel that same face syndrome is entirely acceptable.

Mostly, it’s for comic strips and other cutesy/silly/lighthearted content. As the characters aren’t an accurate representation of anyone from any ethnic group, the largely homogenized faces aren’t a problem.

For instance, most of the children in the Peanuts comics have the same face shape and body type. Even Franklin (who is African American) has the exact same facial structure as the other children. The only major difference between Franklin and all the other boys is his hair texture and complexion.

However, this art style was already so whimsical and cutesy, that drawing him the same way the other children are drawn doesn’t take away from the story OR his character.

Thus, whether ‘same face syndrome’ is acceptable or not will always depend on the story you’re trying to tell.

With serious stories, I believe it’s crucial that we put in the effort to properly represent each character’s individuality and cultural identity. Seeing a face that reminds you of yourself, especially in the romance genre, can be life changing. 

It convinces us (usually subconsciously) that we are worthy of being loved. The less we look like the people in the content we watch and read, the less we’re able to believe that. It’s even more hurtful when we look nothing like characters who are allegedly supposed to be our ethnicity. More often than not, these characters have been fitted to a beauty standard we will never be able to achieve, and why should we have to?

I know many people are only comfortable drawing their own ethnicity. We’re best at rendering the sort of faces we see everyday, and that makes sense. But because of that, comic books and cartoons continue to be extremely homogeneous. Most stories revolve around one ethnic group and two to three tokens from another diaspora who are added formulaically. We bathe in institutionalized diversity.

With the way things are right now, every culture in the world has to make their own stories just to be able to see themselves (properly) represented in stories.

I love art and I am all for everyone creating as much of it as possible, but we artists can also learn to move outside our comfort zone every now and then. We can put in the work to develop the skills needed to represent each other properly. 

If we learn to think of people other than ourselves (and our diasporas) and actively give our neighbors a hand up, no one will ever have to be left out again. No child will have to ask why there are no princes or princesses that look like them.

[outsidethebeautybox]

Highlight: The description only makes this piece all the more beautiful.

This picture was shared by southasiancommunity . The eyes are so pretty, and I love the way this complexion was rendered!

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A post shared by 𝒮𝑜𝓊𝓉𝒽 𝔸şⒾα𝓷 𝓒𝓞ммＵℕιＴ𝐘 (@southasiancommunity)

We are obliterating colorism one piece of art at a time.

[outsidethebeautybox]

White-washing, Meet Skinny-washing

When I said my character was plus-sized, I hope to goodness you just missed that statement, and not that you actually think this slightly curvy, very trim “AU” of my character that you created really counts as ‘plus-sized.’

Honestly, when I search “how to draw plus-sized characters” on YouTube the search results are kind of concerning.

They're extremely limited and/or you get drawings of women who are average weights. They’re not Barbie-thin drawings, but they’re certainly not XL or larger (then again, is there actually a consistent sizing metric for that?)

What exactly are we calling plus-sized nowadays?

As a curvy girl, I still get size-shamed for ‘stretching out’ the pairs of jeans I wear, but they aren’t structured to accommodate my body type. 

The world we live in is ludicrous, but fortunately, I’m fairly used to that by now.

The truth is, though I search for plus-sized drawing tutorials occasionally, plus-sized women aren’t one of my main art struggles. I’ve been drawing them for years now and I’ve even been told I’m the “queen of drawing plus-sized characters.”

While I know that’s a stretch, learning to draw beautiful plus-sized girls has been a form of self-healing for me. 

While I’m far (far) from a Barbie girl even now, when I was in my early teens I was definitely plus-sized. I hated my body, and when I drew self-portraits, I either skinny-washed myself or made myself look ridiculous and monstrous. 

The saddest part is that artists are still doing things like this and posting this hurtful art online.

If this counts as “representation,” it’s some ‘dark empath’ variation that continues to scar plus-sized men and women around the world.

Drawing fat people takes just as much skill as drawing skinny people. It takes effort to be able to draw them “believably” and yet, many many people still choose to use their skills to mock plus-sized people, instead of encouraging and empowering them.

The decisions we make are so much more important than many of us are willing to acknowledge. 

We can help others or we can harm them.

I choose to make my art a form of empowerment. 

When I learned to draw beautiful fat people, I learned to separate my beauty from my weight. Being fat didn’t make me ugly. ‘Fat’ is just a state of being, not an insult.

While I did lose weight for health reasons (being overweight was doing a number on my hormones) I learned that beauty doesn’t have a size-restriction. 

This is the message I want to share through my art, and I hope more people will continue to help me share it. I know some people take this mission every bit as seriously as I do, but often it feels like we’re drowned out by a sea of voices promoting the exact opposite. Often it feels like we’re the minority. Often it feels like people don’t even care whose feelings they batter and bruise.

A few months ago, someone drew the female lead of my WIP novel “Rigamarole” as a gift. I specified in my description of the character that she was plus-sized, but the artist made her skinny. Very skinny. 

I don’t know if he simply misread that part of the description (I’m guilty of “skimming” paragraphs, too.) But I can’t help but feel like it was an intentional decision.

Maybe he didn’t feel like putting in the effort. Maybe he didn’t even know how to draw plus-sized women. Out of all his plot-central female characters, only one has even an ounce of body fat, and that might be a bad sign in and of itself.

I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with being trim or muscular - I love working out. The thing is, even fit or “jacked” women usually still have a notable amount of body fat when they’re healthy. 

The female body is DESIGNED to carry more fat than the male body. Just like it’s unsafe to have an extremely high body fat percentage, it is also often dangerous for women to have extremely low body fat. It convinces our bodies we’re in danger of starvation. We start building up stress hormones and everything becomes a mess.

Life is about balance, not extremes.

There is an overbearing emphasis in this world on thinness. We stick the words “pretty and skinny” together like they’re synonymous. We use photo editing and plastic dolls to create dysmorphic standards for how thin a woman's body “should be.”

It’s horrifying that after all this time, this still needs to be said:

Female bodies store fat for a reason. 

It’s important. Body fat is beautiful. Before you try to ‘idealize’ a body, take the time to understand it. Before you draw, or photo shop, a woman, remember that we are beautifully different, and we matter far too much to have our health or individuality sacrificed in the name of  “beauty.”

[outsidethebeautybox]

Highlight: Pretty birds and dark-skinned queens? Together?!

It's almost like ukelaylie read my mind and found my two obsessions!

I LOVE nature art. Nature art that celebrates dark skinned queens is the best of both worlds.

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A post shared by Laylie (@ukelaylie)

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We stan short queens with big attitudes

This is my female lead Texas Callaway (Height 4'9):

Who is your favorite short queen in the world of comics?

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What is Diversity-Positivity and Why Does It Matter?

While I’m all about body positivity, most of the time it’s reserved for conversations about plus-sized/fat/chubby individuals or characters. Occasionally, I’ve seen it used to talk about other traits that fall outside the beauty standards (like crooked noses) and I am very passionate about this side of representation as well, but “diversity positivity” is bigger than that.

For one thing, it doesn’t really revolve around beauty standards (though beauty standards are anti-diversity positive.) It’s more about adding new colors to our artistic palettes.

Diversity positivity is my personal term for all stories, music videos, fashion lines, drawings (and more) that promote and appreciate the beauty of various diasporas. Whether that diaspora is “female body types,” “people of color” or any other category we use to ‘organize’ humanity.

Diversity positivity is having two black characters in one story with different features, complexions, and hairstyles, who absolutely do NOT look like they could be twins.

Diversity positivity is making the cast of your comic book multi-cultural/multi-ethnic with mixed-race couples and biracial characters.

Diversity positivity is giving all your characters different hair textures, body types, and nose shapes from each other, (even if they're all from the same culture/country.)

Diversity positivity is any way we illustrate, celebrate, and adore the wonderful things that make us all different from each other.

This has been a passion of mine since I was a middle schooler, but for a very long time, I didn’t have a name for it. Since I was 10 years old, I’ve been writing stories about mixed-race couples. I’ve written (and drawn) Arab characters, African American characters, Japanese characters, and more.

A passion for beauty (in any and every form) has been ingrained in my bones for almost two decades, so of course it had to blossom into a passion for genetics, unique cultural traits, and the nuances of human appearance.

Diversity is a wonderful thing. For writers and artists especially, it’s a nearly endless source of inspiration, if we just learn to branch out and widen our perspectives.

A new language can spawn new ideas for wordplay (did you know the Spanish word for “wife” and the word for “handcuff” are identical?) 

And don’t even get me started on the amount of fantasy creatures that exist in different mythologies. (We might finally be able to write about something other than dragons and elves. That would be a nice change of pace.)

And the further we dig into the details of each culture, the more we can learn how to represent their individual nuances. It helps keep our character designs fresh and interesting. Not every Latino or Asian character has to have the same identical character design. Cliches and stereotypes have been recycled more than enough. Let’s go beyond the ‘typical’ and appreciate the rare, the little-known, and the unique.

Did you know that some Koreans (naturally) have 4C hair? Did you know that some Dominican children are blond?

The world is full of beauty, whimsy, and inspiration if we’re willing to look for it.

Diversity positivity doesn’t have to be a struggle or a limitation, (or at least, it shouldn’t have to be.)

Representation actually gives us a LARGER palette to work with. It’s broadening our canvas and our perspectives. Because, honestly, the more we learn and read about the people we share this globe with, the more we’ll realize that we have TONS in common.

But that leads us back to the initial question. 

Why does diversity positivity matter? 

It matters because change starts with changing our mindsets, and there is no better place to start than with the art, books, cartoons, fashion shows, and movies that we enjoy (and create.)

It matters because, 70 years after the civil rights movement of the American 1950s, dark skin is still widely scorned.

It matters because people use the word ‘fat’ as an insult and make massive amounts of artwork mocking fat people instead of giving them a chance to be beautiful like anyone else.

It matters because we still live in a world where it’s novel to find a disabled character in a book or TV show, who isn’t there for a one-off episode about ASL or wheelchairs.

This world needs to think a little further outside the box, or better yet, set that cursed box on fire so we can all roast marshmallows over it together and make smores.

Everyone, fat or thin, able-bodied or disabled, African, Asian, European, or anything else, should get a chance to see themselves in the world of art and the world of fiction.

That’s my mission. Would you like to join me?

[outsidethebeautybox]

Highlight: Dark skin is high-key glamorous

This picture is giving ALL the queen vibes. Shout out to gerdacreates. This belongs in a museum imao.

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A post shared by Toronto Artist (@gerdacreates)

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How It Started (Part 3): The Bengali Boy

I have come to terms with the fact that I am not easy to work with.

Okay, I’m trying really really hard to come to terms with it.

“Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day” is one of my favorite poems and, in the words of Nikki Giovanni, “I know I’m not an easy girl to love.” (Technically, the poem says “woman” but I don’t want to get in trouble for copyright mumbo-jumbo.)

‘I’m very opinionated,’ is what I’m trying to say. I’m passionate, and sometimes that passion means that I have to stand my ground, even when it makes me less popular.

Ya’ll remember that I tried to make a comic with a pinoy artist last year?

Well, a few months after our ugly business-partner break up (might go more into how that whole mess ended later) an Indian artist hit me up asking if I wanted to work together on a project. I’d grown a bit less enthusiastic about partnerships thanks to my previous experience, but I still agreed to give it a shot.

This new artist had a lot of suggestions/preferences for the project. No problem. In my opinion a good partnership means meshing everyone’s ideas into something both parties can be happy with, so I tried really hard to adapt to my new partner without sacrificing my artistic integrity.

She wanted to write a story that would draw a lot of fans and make us money. I try my best to write for the sake of artistic expression, rather than profit, but I agreed we could try to write a story in a more popular genre to increase our likelihood of gaining supporters.

At first the artist was thinking “dark romance,” but dark romance isn’t really my jam.

So, still in the interest of business and “what sells,” she asked if I could do a romance-fantasy story. 

I agreed. 

I love speculative fiction. I write romances. I hadn’t written a fantasy romance since I was 13, but it would be fine.

Or…that’s what I told myself anyway.

The artist's second request was that I make part of the cast Indian, because she was Indian and wanted to see more Indian characters in the media. Again, I agreed. No problem.

I love mixing ethnicities in my fictional casts and have already put numerous Indian characters in my other stories. Adding a few Indian characters would have been easy, but just to lean into her request, I decided to set the story in a modern fantasy world where everyone was either Indian or Dominican. 

It was whimsical and leaned into my quirkiness. I also thought it could make our story more of a “blue ocean” because I don’t know of ANY other stories that have mixed those cultures together.

But then she wanted some changes.

For one thing, she asked me to change the male lead's surname. She didn’t like the way the surname ‘Sarkar’ sounded. I liked the name Sarkar, but she asked me to change it insisting “Trust me, I’m Indian. I know how it sounds.” To be honest, that felt condescending, like the decision to give him the surname ‘Sarkar’ was somehow wrong or silly, rather than a matter of preference.

She strongly suggested that I give him the surname ‘Roy.’ I didn’t care for the name, so compromised, changing his name from ‘Sarkar’ but not to ‘Roy.’

Then she asked me to change the plot I had written. She wanted the male lead to have secretly fallen in love with the female lead before she fell in love with him, though she didn’t know he was in love with her.

I agreed to keep the idea in mind, but as it didn’t really make sense with the rest of the plot, and was kind of tropey, I didn’t think I would be adding that suggestion. Maybe it was unreasonable, but by that point, I was starting to get a bit frustrated.

Then she commented on the fact that all the main characters had dark hair and dark eyes. 

In my mind that made sense, because most Dominicans have dark hair and eyes and every Indian I’ve ever met did too, but again, I compromised. No problem.

I gave the Dominican female lead silvery-blue eyes. It’s a rare trait, but thanks to the fact that most Dominicans are part European, some of us do naturally have light colored eyes and even blonde or reddish hair. I’d recently read a book by Madhur Jaffrey which mentioned that some Indians have naturally red hair and green eyes, so I decided to make the female lead’s Indian bff a ginger with green eyes.

Finally, I thought, we could move forward. I made reference image folders on Pinterest and got to drawing character design sheets for the artist to use as a reference.

I successfully completed three. 

We hit a sticking point when I drew the male lead.

We’d agreed toward the beginning of the process that we would make the male lead Bengali and the female lead Dominican.

While the different Dominican characters had varying features (slanted eyes, round eyes, blue eyes, dark eyes) and complexions (from dark brown sugar to cashew), they all fell under the umbrella term of “Dominican” because we don’t have different distinct cultural groups and languages. 

The Indian characters, however, would be from different cultures, primarily Bengali and Rajasthani, and I was pretty proud of the diversity of features and complexions I had given them all. One had medium brown skin, one had a caramel-brown complexion, and the male lead was dark, chocolate brown.

Up until that point, most of my ethnic male leads had light or medium brown skin tones, though some of my female leads had very dark, or even (literally) black skin tones (I’m looking at you, Essence Walker and Mora Glas.)

I personally think dark skinned people need more representation in the media, so when this character appeared in my mind with a beautiful ‘dark brown sugar’ complexion, I rolled with it instantly.

But…the artist didn’t want him to have dark skin. 

In fact, she wanted to give him light brown skin and hazel eyes, saying that dark hair and dark eyes aren’t actually that common in India, and north Indians usually don’t have very dark skin.

“He doesn’t look Bengali.”

Even after all I’d read about colorism in the Indian subcontinent, I didn’t really know how to respond to that statement.

I realize I’ve never been to India or Bangladesh, so I didn’t want to disregard her opinion, but I also know it’s foolish to accept any one person’s statements as fact without getting cross-references.

Doing a little research, I found that 98-99% of the population of Bangladesh is Bengali by ethnicity (though their nationality is “Bangladeshi.”) 

Then I looked up some articles from Bengali newspapers and surprise-surprise, most of the people in the crowds had medium to dark brown skin, as opposed to the medium to light brown complexions which the Indian artist had told me were most common.

I sent the artist these images for reference, but still she insisted that Bengalis don’t look like “these dark-skinned people.”

So who was I supposed to agree with?

I don’t want to disregard anyone’s opinion, especially when it comes to subjects where I KNOW I am ignorant.

But the articles I’ve read by Indian and Bangladeshi people keep insisting that there are dark-skinned people in India. The videos filming ordinary citizens in Bangladesh and West Bengal all show footage of dark or dusky skinned people.

So I couldn’t in good conscience lighten my male lead’s complexion.

Especially not when the artist praised the characters having rare European features but was opposed to giving the male lead dark skin, which she also claimed was ‘rare,’ though possible.

Red is the rarest hair color in the world but the artist liked it when I gave one of the Indian characters red hair and green eyes -

Just not when I give the Bengali boy dark skin. 

It really really rubbed me the wrong way, so I ended the collaboration before things could go down hill any further.

Even after my other failed partnership, it still wasn’t a fun or easy decision.

I don’t WANT to be a pain. I don’t want to be difficult to work with. I’d already changed names, hair and eye colors to suit her preferences, but there are some places where I need to put my foot down. 

As our argument over the male lead’s skin continued, she’d shared her plans to make all the Indian character’s light-skinned, and I simply couldn’t agree with that.

For too long, the whole world has scorned dark skin and refused to give dark-skinned characters a turn in the spotlight. India is no exception. Skin-lightening creams have been renamed (yes, I learned about “Glow and Lovely” because of this situation) but the problems still remain. 

Dark/dusky skin is scorned. People refuse to acknowledge it as beautiful. I refuse to work on a project that perpetuates this disparagement and mistreatment.

This bigotry needs to end now.

Dusky skin is beautiful. It doesn’t make you any less Indian. 

My male lead will have dark skin, even if I have to wait years to find another artist who is willing to draw him in all his glory.

[outsidethebeautybox]

Highlight: Beautiful Dresses for Beautiful Women

Can we also just talk about the fact that JessaKae has an older model? Like, thank you. Beauty does not have a time limit!

[outsidethebeautybox]

How It Started (Part 2): The Mermaid

How black is “too black”?

Right when you thought the stress was over, new and improved kinds of stress and anxiety spring out at you like a jump scare. I love a good jump scare but, in my arrogant opinion, they’re a lot less entertaining when they worm their way into your irl existence.

A few months ago, I started writing an action-fantasy novel called “Crystal Blue,” which happens to be my first EVER action fantasy novel. There was a lot about the genre that I still had to learn, but, as is typical of my stories, one of the first notable elements of this story was its highly diverse cast.

The main character is a biracial (Welsh and Cameroonian) mermaid trying to keep the general populace from knowing she’s a mermaid. (I promise it’s not as cheesy as it sounds.)

Tropes aside, it’s a major part of this mermaid’s character design that she has VERY dark skin. Like, her skin is literally black. 

Reason being: her grandfather was a pretty dark-skinned guy already, the mermaids are kind of magical, and dark skin is gorgeous.

Here’s the hiccup: I was not very good at drawing, and I wanted to make promotional art for my story.

I’m a much better artist now than I was a few months ago thanks to the magic of practice and boring (but useful) art lessons. But back then I was just starting my digital art journey and I had no idea how to draw someone with really dark skin without their features (drawn with black lines) looking washed out.

I’m half Hispanic (Dominican on my dad’s side) and half African-American, so I’m not ignorant of things like blackface, sambo dolls, and other racist caricatures of black people. I just wasn’t prepared for people to bring up Mr. Popo when I asked a forum full of artists for some advice on how to make my character’s features more visible.

When I say things got wild, I mean things got WILD. 

People posted comments (or…rants?) claiming that my character was not “representing” anyone and looked “lazy.” 

Some folks boldly assumed that I didn’t know any black people because of my struggle to draw this mermaid. Others claimed that the mermaid’s skin was “just too dark for it’s context” - POC readers wouldn’t care that I gave the character the darkest skin I possibly could, just whether or not the character looked good.

I can’t speak for the entirety of my diaspora, but as a POC myself, I respectfully disagree.

As a black woman, and a black female writer at that, I’m sick and tired of black characters being restricted to a highly limited range of colors, especially black characters that are supposed to be pretty.

For some inexplicable reason, it’s only the racist caricatures that are allowed to have very dark skin, and that idea in itself is wrong and harmful.

There are thousands of shades in the black diaspora, and all of them are beautiful. Whether your complexion is molasses black or cashew-colored or anything in between, you are lovely. So why are some “black” complexions deemed more acceptable than others while other (real) complexions are dubbed lazy or racist.

For those who don’t know, and are curious to learn, there really are people in the world whose complexions appear ‘exceptionally’ dark or almost literally black. I know some personally, and when I was a child, I literally thought their skin was black. 

Do these women not deserve to be represented?

Personally, even if my readers will only care how pretty my mermaid looks, I would much rather see an ‘average’ looking character who strayed away from the norm than one more “pretty black girl” cliche.

To the unkind commenter’s credit, they did say that there were other characters with very dark skin who still looked beautiful, but since I hadn’t done much rendering, my character looked “lazy” and I needed to use a different color.

The thing is, I didn’t know HOW to do the rendering. That’s why I was trying to get help. 

Unfortunately, asking for advice led to cyberbullying in the form of passive-aggressive (or just plain aggressive) comments. 

The most well intentioned artists who replied often just didn’t understand my point. They thought I just wanted to make a character look “black” (african/african american) and again and again the suggestion was to give them a chocolate brown complexion.

But that’s the problem. This is a character- a PERSON - not a concept. I wasn’t trying to just make a character who could “represent” a black girl like some sort of avatar for the entire diaspora. I was writing about one specific individual, who was a-typical, but still important.

I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with chocolate brown. I love chocolate. Chocolate is a beautiful color. But it’s not the ONLY color that black people come in.

The problem with lightening my character’s skin, even to a shade that was still (relatively) dark, is that it continues to turn us into tokens. 

Writers and artists keep recreating the same black character and inserting them into different books, shows, and movies. More often than not, black characters in shows that don’t revolve around the black diaspora have extremely similar hair, facial features, and complexions, and that complexion is usually chocolate brown. That’s when we’re lucky.

Sometimes black characters are given the exact same facial structure as the white characters, and the only difference between them and the other characters is their skin tone.

Again, it’s very often chocolate brown or lighter.

But there is so much more to us than that. 

So many faces, complexions, and hair textures fall under the umbrella term of “black” and those people deserve a moment in the spotlight too.

There are people in South Sudan who wear complexions every bit as “unrealistically” black as the complexion that I gave my character. So even if other artists fail to see the value of my creative decision, that doesn’t invalidate it.

Deep dark/black skin does NOT turn a character into a caricature. The very fact that particularly dark skin brings to mind racist caricatures is because of prevailing racist mindsets. 

I think about it like this. If someone drew a white character with a 9H pencil and their features were hard to see, most people would just blame the mistake on the artist's inexperience. They wouldn’t assume that the character design was racist.

The only reason why it doesn’t go both ways is because we’re all still associating dark skin with sambo dolls.

That’s unfair. It’s unfair to artists and it’s unfair to all the people who really have this complexion who will never be represented because people are afraid to represent them, or are told not to.

A few months after this experience centering around my mermaid character, I met an asian artist who told me they hadn’t practiced drawing dark-skinned characters very much because they were worried about being offensive. 

This isn’t the life we should be living.

For once and for all, black skin is not a problem. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. We NEED to keep fighting to make this world a place where no one is afraid of the dark. No one should have to worry that giving a character dark skin or broad noses will make them “racist.” Racism is based in our intentions, not in our mistakes or even in our ignorance.

After 4 months of practice, I (defiantly) continue to draw characters with (literally) black skin tones. It isn’t lazy, in fact, it takes infinitely more work than it does to render my light and medium brown-skinned characters whose complexions never wash out their facial features. I’ve gotten better at art as a whole, and I can now draw these black characters in a way where their features remain visible and their designs remain distinct.

I am proud to be the creator of these lovely people.

We are all defiantly beautiful.

[outsidethebeautybox]

Highlight:

Brown skin (which I think some people call dusky skin?) is gorgeous! Shout out to artby_gt This piece is beautiful!

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Gaurav Thakur (@artby_gt)

I like how the flowers almost look lacy, and I LOVE those stray strands of hair. The whole illustration SCREAMS pride and elegance.

[outsidethebeautybox]

How It Started: Part 1: The Fan Art

A little less than a year ago I started working on a webcomic with an aspiring comic creator from the Philippines.

I’d already released several chapters of my serialized web novel “Damsel in the Red Dress” at that time, and as we worked together on our comic project, this artist was reading my novel. 

For those who don’t know (which is probably everyone) my novel is about a Mexican-Navajo painter from Baltimore, Maryland. 

She’s a short, brown-skinned, Hispanic queen just like me, and one of the things that I love so much about this novel is how it gives me an opportunity to represent a different kind of beauty. My female lead is a heroine who (beautifully) lives outside the “beauty box” of cultural norms and beauty standards.

But, unfortunately, some people don’t care about representation as much as I do.

I’d been working with this artist for a few weeks when she decided that she wanted to do a ‘fanart’ of my novel’s heroine. I was both flattered and elated, and readily approved the idea. 

The artist asked me for a description of the character (so she wouldn’t have to go back through the whole book and piece the description together herself.) 

The summary I sent her was brief, but crystal clear in terms of color: The character had black hair and cinnamon brown skin.

So imagine my bafflement when, a few days later, the artist posted her “fanart” on Instagram and claimed that it was a drawing of my character.

The drawing she posted had the complexion of a Disney princess. I don’t mean Moana, Tiana or the new version of “The Little Mermaid.” She was Cinderella, Aurora, Belle from “Beauty and the Beast” white, and that baffled me and made my heart sink.

To be fair, the artist made two versions of the fan art. One of the versions had the cinnamon brown complexion I had described, and the other was fair skinned. 

I don’t mind people “reimagining” characters. The problem is, the fair-skinned version is the one that was put on the first slide. The brown-skinned version, the accurate version, ‘won’ second place, and the light-skinned version hadn’t been labeled an ‘AU’ or ‘Reimagining'.’

When I asked the artist why she did this she just said that she liked the light-skinned version better.

Sadly, brown and black girls have been swallowing similar sentiments for time out of mind, and honestly, it makes me so mad I could spit.

Maybe, after all this time, I should be over being bothered by this. 

Maybe, but I’m not, so that brings us here.

First of all, there is absolutely nothing wrong with having fair skin or making fair skinned characters. Fair skin is every bit as beautiful as dark skin. But my character is not fair-skinned, and people of all complexions deserve to be represented in the media.

In my opinion, it is absolutely unacceptable to light-wash or bleach anyone’s skin, even if that “someone” is just a character.

In my opinion, media is one of the most influential things in the world. Even when we don’t care about politics or the news, we watch television, we read comics and we watch commercials (whether we like it or not.) Media, especially fiction, has the power to influence our thoughts and cultural ideals, and that’s why it’s so important that we use it to promote equity and love.

Hence, this blog “Outside the Beauty Box.”

This is a place where we can learn about and discuss the realities of colorism, light-washing, skinny-washing and all other toxic beauty standards promoted through the media. 

BUT, it’s also a place where we can encourage each other, promoting self love and diversity-positivity.

This is a place to learn about art, music, stories, (and more) that people are using to promote this message that I am so ravenously passionate about: 

“The bodies we were born with are BEAUTIFUL.”

There is no surgery, injection, device, accessory, or beauty product on planet earth that could make you more wonderful or loveable than you are right now.

So let’s get to sharing the love shall we?

Let’s start with an introduction! Leave a comment and tell me what country you’re from. What are beauty standards like on your part of the globe?

I’m also planning to do some interview type essays/articles on this blog, so if you have a story you would like to share about your beauty experience feel free to DM me and I’ll interview you. 

People from anywhere in the world are welcome (and encouraged) to share their stories. This is a home for everyone of every color (except green.)

Whether you’re detailing the reality of toxic beauty standards in your country or explaining how you came to love the skin you're in, both stories are equally needed outside the beauty box.

Come sit with us. We see the world through rainbow tinted glasses. 

For now, have a lovely day, beautiful people!