Land of the free, home of the brave.  As young America has celebrated our culture with decades of exciting fashion, African American beauty has taken a while to be noticed.

The black community has always appreciated and longed for products and fashion that highlighted their culture, but it took a whole lot longer for the world to begin to use them in mainstream media.

Now, in 2017 if we look in a magazine and flip to a random page, we’re more likely to see a person of color on the cover.

However, that was not the way it always was.

In fact, it took Sports Illustrated 10 years to put an African American model, Tyra Banks, on the cover.  

For years and years, women of color had no one to represent them. Too many black girls had to grow up with baby dolls and barbies that looked nothing like them.

Almost all the dolls seen on the shelves have the generic blonde hair and blue eyes.

No doll with dark skin came out until  Black Barbie was launched in 1980.

It is shocking that it took 21 years for a black doll to come out after a white doll.

How can we expect young black children to appreciate and be confident in their skin, if we’re not giving them products that look like them? It doesn’t stop there.

Even as adults, it is very hard for women of color to find makeup shades that match their skin.

There is usually only one or two options for African-Americans, when there are way more than two shades of darker skin tones.  

What a nude lipstick or nude stocking might be on a fairer skinned person is nowhere near to nude for a lot of people of color.

A nude lipstick for a fair skinned person will most likely make a colored women look washed out.

It wasn’t until recently when black companies starting rising up that popular brands started to make makeup products specifically for people of color.

Makeup isn’t the only thing the black community has decided to do on their own.

Since it took not only years, but decades in some cases, to have black women on their covers and in their pages, it was only until entrepreneurs like John H. Johnson of Jet magazine that black people made their own magazines.

We even have a club at our school dedicated to raising awareness and appreciating black beauty. They’re shaping our minds to see beauty in African Americans.

“For starters, BCAA, stands for Black Cultural Awareness Association. It’s a club open to any, and everyone, where we share ideas and opinions on issues not only facing the Black community, but also minority’s,” said BCAA Jemela Kanu. “This club was created so that students at AHS would have a safe environment to share what they feel is important to them.”

Non people of color don’t understand black beauty until black people decided to make it known that they love themselves and are unashamed of and accept of who they are in their natural state.

Not covered with makeup that doesn’t match them. They decided to make a stand as their own. They embraced themselves and have love for who they are.

Everyone is beautiful in their own state, in their own unique hair and skin. It is that uniqueness that makes us beautiful.

We can even see that in the natural hair movement. Taking off the wigs, rejecting the perms or hiding under braids.

Society shouldn’t affect us anymore.