On Feeling Beautiful
Affirming my Beauty amidst Queer Woke Culture
In a prior post on how I heal my loneliness, I wrote something that has stayed with me:
I love that there isn’t a cultural vacuum here [in Philly], where gender ideology is constantly shoved down my throat, and where I’m actually seen as a beautiful, feminine woman with luscious locs, rather than a genderless they/them QTBIPOC “person”, the way I am in my white liberal hometown.
Ever since then, I’ve been reflecting on my perception of my own beauty, and how much my environment impacts my mental health and self-esteem. I’ve been thinking about the ways in which queer culture silently erases black beauty and black womanhood, all while making a spectacle of us.