“They woke up that way. Went to bed that way. Sometimes we spotted them in public. They stood out among the dark black faces like beautiful red hibiscus flowers among weeds,” recalls Nicole Dennis-Benn in a beautifully written essay on the toxicity of colorism for Elle. She’s describing the Jamaican beauty queens whose lighter complexions cast a shadow over the self-esteem of young women on a Caribbean island recovering from the side-effects of slavery and colonialism.
My favorite reads are those that tell the surprising story behind the familiar. In this piece for CNN Thomas Page lifts the mask of Alien and sheds light on the unknown British-Nigerian actor who embodied the cult character. That a black man, Bolaji Badejo, played such an integral role in a Hollywood classic was eye-opening and is all the more poignant as the debate over the industry's race problem rages on.
DJ Sian Anderson challenges the idea that there’s a “right” way to be a mother for Noisey. Anderson describes how she juggles a demanding media career with being a young single mother. It will strike a chord with a generation who were told they could have it all. “I kept telling myself that I was different, that I’d already broken the stereotype of young, black, college dropout girls from South East London,” she says, “but, deep down, I wasn’t so sure. For the first time in a long time, I doubted myself.” Do read the rest of her honest account.