Beauty is not one face, one body, one attire. Beauty is fluid like water, changing to fit the shape of an object. Before colonization, the idea of beauty in Africa differed from tribe to tribe. Today, we look through the history of our style, and the visual identity of Africans before western influences corrupted our sense of beauty. Standards of beauty around the world differed vastly before the imperial rule of the Europeans enforced a “universal” idea of beauty that is still being peddled across the world till today.
The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep love. - Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
The thing about history is that it repeats itself, maybe not in exact replicas, maybe with slight modifications but history often repeats itself. This is especially visible in Fashion. Clothes that had their shine in the ’80s are now rebranded as vintage, every alte kids seems to be rocking different shades of bell bottom jeans and colored lens. More appropriately, people are starting to return to their roots. Our culture deserves to be preserved, celebrated and updated to suit our times.
It is no secret how some secretly self-hating African women do crazy stuff to their hair to achieve the straight and flowy look of Asian and Caucasian hair. Likewise, the need to have straight hair and the negative view towards natural African hair is evidence of how much western beauty is slowly chipping away the blocks of traditional beauty in African society.
In April, the spokesman of the Lagos state Police Command, Bala Elkanah said that tattoos and dreadlocks are strange to our culture. Which is an absurd thing to say because African hair is the only hair type with texture naturally suited to locking.
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Tribal Marks
Tribal marks were once considered to be beauty staples. They were used as a means of identification and also to represent royal families. Each tribe had a different inscription pattern from the next. They varied in shapes, sizes and even location. Tribal marks could be etched on the face, lap, arms, butt, even on the breast. The position and location of a mark depend on the tribe and culture of the people.
In Ile-Ife, they draw three straight lines on the cheek while in Owu, they drew six short vertical lines on each side of the cheeks. In Nupe, their marks were in curves on the cheeks. The Igbos drew two straight lines on the sides of the eyes. The act of drawing tribal marks has however been abolished. Knives, blunt blades were often used to inflict this marks on the faces or bodies of children. A dark pigment may be applied to the cut to create a more beautifully pigmented scarring and prevent infections. Tattoos are a modification of these tribal marks. They used the same procedure of carving the layers of the skin to leave lines or in the case of tattoos drawings of animals, men or even inscriptions.
Hairstyles
Africans also used hair as a way to express beauty. Hair could represent a person’s tribe, spirituality and family background. From the 15th century, a person’s hair could tell their age, financial status, their rank on the social hierarchy of a community or tribe. To represent royalty, elaborate hairstyles were worn. During mourning, hair left alone to wit. It signified the state of things. Thick, long hair was considered a symbol of fertility and clean hair symbolized a women’s ability to bear healthy children.
In Africa, Spirituality is one thing that is infused in everything. Hair was seen as a tool for divine communication because it is the part of the body that is closest to the gods. It is why hair was only ever manipulated by close family members because it was believed that if strands of your hair fell into the hands of your enemies, they could invoke harm to you. Like tribal marks, hairstyles and their meanings varied from tribe to tribe.
The Fulani women had five long braids that hang on the sides of their faces with a big braid in the middle of their heads. Sometimes, beads and cowries are used to adorn these braids. Some family had special silver coins that were sometimes used to adorn the hair. It was an expression of heritage. Meanwhile, in Himba of Namibia, the women styled their hair using a mix of ground ochre, goat hair, and butter. This formed locs that varied from woman to woman. A teenage girl can have her dreads hanging above her eyes but a young lady ready to get married ties her locs back. It was easier to see her face like this. When these women got married they wore an Erembe headdress- made from animal skin over their heads.
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Men were not left out in the hairstyling culture of Himba. Unmarried men wore their hair in single plaits to tell women that they were ready to be cuffed and when they got married they were to cover their heads with turbans, never to be taken of, except during funerals. Similar to Himba, Afar of Ethiopia people locked their hair with butter. This butter protect the hair from damage the sun causes and gives it an ashy appearance that is an actual vibe.
The Mumuhuila women of Angola have a different perspective to hairstyling and beauty. The women coat their hair in oncula, a red paste made of grinded red stone. Sometimes they mix oncula with oil, tree barks, dried cow dung and a variety of herbs. The hair is adorned with beads and sometimes dried food. Their foreheads were shaved because it was considered to be beautiful. They also wore dreadlocks, which is called nontombi. Women usually wear four to six nontombi on her head but they wore three, it meant that someone had passed away in their family. Hair was a way to communicate without having to say words.
Dreadlocks as a hairstyle, has been around for as long as African hair has existed. Even in the bible, Samson wore his hair in locs that held his strength. According to The Encyclopedia of Hair, a cultural history, the priests of the Ethiopian coptic religion wore dreadlocks as early as 500 BCE. Jamicians.com attributes the origination of dreads to the massai tribe of Kenya. Their locks started from braids that were never loosened. The warriors in this tribe wore dreads that they sometimes red with root extracts. The Akan, Namtus,Peul, Bono, Galla, Oromo people wore their hair in locs. Only kings in Wolof, Senegal wore their hair in locs.
Unconventional Standards
In earlier times, standards of beauty were unconventional in contrast with today. For example, the Massai women and men of Kenya wear heavy earrings made of stones or elephant tusks to stretch their earlobes. The wider the hole, the more attractive the woman. The women wore bright colored beads on their ears to bring attention to it.
The Mursi women from Ethopia wore lip plates to signify that they were ready for marriage. To insert the disk, they must first remove two lower front teeth then a piercing is made to allow a wooden or clay disk to stretch the lip. In the same manner, as ear stretching, bigger disks are inserted over time to further stretch the lip. As the girls grow older, they take pride in carving out their plate, even adorning it.
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Beauty in African Art
Westerners have collected African art for centuries. But do they really understand it? Who determines what is beautiful and what is ugly in African art? Can viewers judge art solely by the standards of beauty in their own culture?
That’s the question a recent exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago sought to answer. The collection was massive, taking up six or so rooms, filled with over 250 works of art from dozens of cultures across Sub-Saharan Africa. The idea is to put art in its cultural context. How did the local communities view these works of art?
“For some African cultures, scarification, including on the face, is a way to enhance someone’s beauty - especially that of a woman. There’s often a religious aspect to these works. “So the art is not made just to be art,” says Constantine Petridis, chair and curator of arts of Africa at the Art Institute. “It’s art that serves a purpose, serves a function and has a meaning.
Masculinity is depicted with youthful, muscular bodies and large hands and feet. In many African cultures, the ideal male figure is tall and lean, with long limbs, an elongated neck and muscular calves.
Dualities in African Art | The Language of Beauty in African Art
While the exact proportions of the ideal female figure vary between African cultures, there are some common elements frequently seen across the continent. An ikam crest mask from Nigeria depicts the fantastical hairstyles girls had created for their initiation into womanhood. A mwana pwo or pwo mask from Angola is more realistic than other depictions of beauty in African art. Scarification is considered beautiful. This particular aspect of beauty is probably the most difficult for Westerners to grasp.
“Artists who intend to instill fear through their objects may represent ugliness by mimicking or referencing animals, especially powerful and fearsome ones,” Petridis says. “Additional features will be incorporated into fantastic compositions that comprise elements sourced literally from the natural world - actual animal parts: hides, horns, teeth, fur.”
Wodaabe People
The Wodaabe people mainly live in West Africa, including Niger, Nigeria, Chad, and Cameroon and have an estimated population of 125,000. They are a subgroup of the Fulani ethnic group and speak the Fula language. The Fulani also refer to themselves as Fulbe. The word Wodaabe means “people of the taboos” and refers to the emphasis of cultural taboos. These customs are integrated into the Wodaabe people’s daily lives, and the Wodaabe also place emphasis onto beauty. Beauty standards for the Wodaabe are especially important to the ritual dances and ceremonies.
For the Wodaabe, beauty (wodi) and existence (woodi) are linked. Beauty and aesthetics are integral to Wodaabe daily life, and each person prioritizes maintaining a beautiful appearance. Ritual and magical practices, music, dance, and bodily ornamentation are reproduced largely by Wodaabe youth. The Wodaabe artistic practices mostly revolve around ornamentation, such as tattooing, body painting, and costume embroidery. Basic aesthetic principles found in all Wodaabe art forms are symmetry and geometry.
Personal beauty standards include symmetrical, narrow faces with long noses; thin lips, big, white eyes and teeth; and long hair. Men are expected to be tall and slim and to have stiff posture to achieve this look. Men’s clothing is expected to be elegant and extravagant, using these artistic forms of symmetrical and geometric designs. Behavior is also judged for its beauty. A beautiful man is expected to be charming and intelligent, reminiscent of the Fulbe ways of life.
The most recognized ceremony of the Wodaabe is the rainy season gathering, or ngaankya. The participants are two lineages from the 2 major tribes, Alijam and Degereewol. This week-long festival culminates with the Gerewol dance, or war dance, in which the young men of either tribe adorn themselves according to Wodaabe beauty standards. This includes painting their bodies, faces, and necks red and using white feathers and beads as accessories. Wearing beautiful clothing and jewelry is also a necessity, including Tuareg amulets.
In the dance, the young men have straight, stiff posture, and use light, graceful movements. Also, they roll their eyes back to expose the white of their eyes and open their mouths to show their white teeth. Each man is judged by the young women from the opposing tribe to be crowned the most handsome, and the winner is called seekoowo. This is a prestigious honor, and the seekoowo will be recognized for years following their victory. The Gerewol is also a place in which marriages between members of the opposing tribes are formed.
Modern Influences
As we dig deeper to find our roots, perhaps our perception of what is beautiful can be recalibrated to be more inclusive of our natural features, natural hairstyles, and native styling. Culture is something that we can create, face tattoos are nothing to gawk at in modern times, and the rave of freckles had some ladies tattoo spots on their faces, perhaps the practice to tattooing tribal marks will come back soon. Through tribal marks, without any shame, we can say this is who we are, this is where we are from, without once uttering a word.
Here, the term Black is not used exclusively as a term of race but to indicate a group of people whose features don’t resemble those of Arabs or Cushites. So what are the beauty standards in Africa? In general, the African beauty standard places a woman with curvy features, meat on her bones, wide hips, and an attractive face on a pedestal. While for men, their handsome gauge emphasizes a fit athletic body or a muscled physique. Additionally, African women tend to go ga-ga over the proverbial dark, tall, and handsome African man. When it comes to skin tone, dark-skinned men are hotcakes compared to light skin tone. However, for women, light and dark-skinned women get equal date-time from men.
