Teen filmmaker exposes beauty double-standards
By Hazel Trice Edney
Of the NNPA
The reassuring female voice asks the child a question: “Can you show me the doll that looks bad?”
The child, a preschool-aged black girl, quickly picks up and shows the black doll over a white one that is identical in every respect except complexion.
“And why does that look bad?”
“Because she’s black,” the little girl answers emphatically.
“And why is this the nice doll?” the voice continues.
“Because she’s white.”
“And can you give me the doll that looks like you?”
The little girl hesitates for a split second before handing over the black doll.
This was not the 1954 doll test used by pioneering psychologist Kenneth B. Clark to help make the case for desegregation in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision. Rather, it was a doll test duplicated in Harlem, N.Y., last year. The results were unchanged.
The test is again in the news because of an 8-minute documentary produced by 17-year-old film student Kiri Davis of Manhattan’s Urban Academy who participates in the Reel Works Teen Filmmaking program, a free after-school program supported by HBO.
“I knew what my friends were going through. These standards of beauty just kept coming up,” Davis said.
“I thought it was an issue that needed to be exposed more, although at times it seemed too taboo to talk about.”
In realizing that so many dark-skinned girls have been told that lighter or whiter skin is more beautiful, Davis decided to drive home her point by conducting the doll study.
“You could tell these people about the standards of beauty that are forced on young girls all you want to. But they won’t get it until you show them,” she said.
The children are from a Harlem Day Care Center. And 15 of the 21 children surveyed preferred the white doll over the black one.
Clark and his wife, Mamie Phipps Clark, also a psychologist, conducted the doll study in 1950. The Clarendon County, S.C. experiment involved 16 black children, ages 6 to 9. They asked the children their perception of a white doll and a black doll. Eleven of the students said the black doll looked “bad” and nine said the white doll looked “nice.”
The test results influenced the U.S. Supreme Court to hold school segregation to be unconstitutional in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas case. Arguing against the separate-but-equal doctrine in 1952, Thurgood Marshall, then an attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, cited Clark’s work as proof of the doctrine’s damage to the self-image of black children.
On May 17, 1954, Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren announced the court’s decision to desegregate schools in Brown v. Board of Education. Clark’s doll test was one of his citations as proof of the psychological damage on black children.
The Davis test shows that psychology has not changed very much at all.
Davis’ film also features brief interviews with four teens who object to having been stereotyped as less intelligent or uglier simply because they do not meet the expectations of advertisers’ perceived standards of beauty.
That white-is-right image is also projected through music.
“Look at our rap artists and entertainers, and not just the Lil’ Kims and the Beyoncés,” said Julia Hare, a San Francisco psychologist. “Their skin is getting lighter and lighter and they’re getting blonder and blonder.”
Gail Wyatt, a professor of clinical psychiatry at the University of California, said children should be socialized between the ages of two and four to understand culture and skin color.
“They should be taught a concept of beauty and a context of ancestry,” he said.
Kiri’s mother, Ursula Davis, is an education consultant and said educating her daughter and instilling pride about her heritage was a high priority around the home.
She said that when Kiri was in pre-kindergarten, enjoying the tales of Cinderella and Snow White, she once said out loud at school that she wanted to be a princess, too.
A little friend, a Hispanic boy, quickly dispelled her dream. He told her she couldn’t be a princess because she was black.
“We took her to an exhibit in the Smithsonian about black women,” Davis said. “We’ve immersed her in the celebration of who she is.”