Hey Girl Am I More Than My Hair

My topic for this paper is body image and African American women. I have chosen this topic because I am an African American girl who has struggled with my body image all of my life so I feel that I can easily connect to this topic. When I was younger, I mostly played with white Barbies because they had better accessories and clothes than the black Barbies. This reinforced in my head that white was better than black and this mind set took years for me to reverse. The subject of the people affected by this issue is African American girls of all ages, but more heavily from early childhood to young adulthood, especially if they are surrounded by media. Body image affects African American women of all socioeconomic stand points but is more prominent in lower to lower middle classes.
The modern issue of body image and African American women begins with the media. In the journal, Hey Girl Am I More than My Hair? the author, Tracey Owens Patton, talks about
The options of identification now are Black, African American, and African. African is widely accepted as someone who came directly from Africa to America, but then the confusion sets in. Slaves were brought from Africa to America and so were Blacks. In its simplest form, Blacks are considered those whose ancestors were brought to America as slaves. African American is a mixture of the Black and African definition. Depending on how the woman identifies herself, she will be different. African women may show more ethnic pride in the way they dress, and their hairstyles. Blacks may be more accustomed to straightening their hair because that it what they are surrounded by because of the media. Since there is confusion in the definitions of each identification and how women identify, the divide in standards can be clearly understood. It is up to each individual women to decide what each means to