The Impact of Intergenerational Beauty

It was probably your mother.

She was the first person who really showed you that you were beautiful. She did that by affirming and refuting what beauty meant to the people inside your world vs. the people outside of your world respectively.  

Then it was probably later on in life when you noticed that she got those same standards of beauty from her mother; whether she was running with the lessons taught to her or from them, your mother is proof that your perception of beauty was passed down to you from women before your lifetime and during it.

And after realizing these facts long ago, it is not until the last couple of years that I realized I should be grateful for the intergenerational standards of beauty that I have in my life whether I learned them in person or through faded memories.

Representation Matters

Seeing celebrity mother-daughter duos, and grandmother, mother, daughter trios, on screen has shown me first hand what the outside world sees when I stand side-by-side with my mother.  A strong tandem, with smooth brown skin, jet black hair, and extremely full lips that until recently were not a trend but something that I wanted to minimize. My mother impressed upon me the importance of maximizing them. They were ours.

I imagine the early curls featured on Tracee Ellis Ross made her feel the same way. Of course, this is before she realized that her signature curly fro was not only legendary via the recorded stage performances of her mother, Diana Ross, but also what made her unique in this world of pin-straight hair and Halle Berry pixie cuts.

That same pixie cut that Adrienne Banfield-Norris passed down to her daughter, Jada Pinkett Smith, to highlight her jawbone and piercing stare. A stare that now defines the word understanding. A stare that she’s passed onto her daughter Willow, who is wise beyond her years and wears a crown of dreads in stark contrast to her mother’s blonde straight locks.

The Irony of it All

As time goes on, we always seem to put our own twist on what is it that “our Mama gave us.” Forgetting only for a moment who the originators were for our signature walks, talks, looks and everything in between. Intergenerational beauty embodies the saying “What’s yours is mine, and what’s mine is yours,” making it hard to permanently lose sight of why we apply the makeup to our faces and the glosses to our lips in the ways that we do. Every time we get ready in the morning, subconsciously building ourselves up to step into the world, we pay a sort of homage to the women who impact everything we are going to be.

I hope we make you proud.

Happy Mother’s Day.