Suvee+R’s+Final+AmEx+Speech+2016


 * The "color" nude **

About a month ago, I was reminded of a poem I wrote freshman year, in Mrs. Wantz’s Honors English Class. It was the first poem I had written that I filled with so much personal experience. I can remember reading it in a bundle of nerves to the class and my voice shaking, but today I’m only going to read you the first two stanzas of my crappy freshman poem.

“Walk into CVS and show me the darkest shade of COVERGIRL foundation you see. It's too light for my skin tone.

How can this society claim to be equal when some women have trouble finding make up for their own skin.”

This poem was written in 2014, prior to when I had truly found a makeup product that matched my skin.

A prime example of how hard it is, would be the brand Maybelline. I’m sure you’ve all seen the ads and know about their famous jingle… “*maybe she’s born with it*” “maybe it’s Maybelline”

Maybelline has this line of makeup called “Fit Me” and the appeal of this specific line is that there is supposedly a shade for everyone. Don’t get me wrong most cosmetic lines, do have darker shades now, in 2016. But Maybeline being the wonderful company it is, is ignorant to the fact that there are different shades of brown people. Just like how there are 50 shades of grey, there are 50 shades of white people and 50 shades of brown people. Back to maybelline though, they decided that all of their “fit me” foundations and concealers we’re going to be warm toned.

And on the spectrum of overall skin color, I definitely lean towards a warmer complexion because I’m brown but once you zoom in on the spectrum of brown people I for sure lean more neutral. So now I can’t use Maybelline face makeup it makes me look like a CARROT. Once I learned how cruel they were to the animals they test on, I have no appeal in supporting them.

While this might not seem like a big deal to you, it’s important to me.

So here I have a standard bandage from the brand Johnson & Johnson, or BAND AID. I never realized band aids were supposed to blend in. It never crossed my mind until say middle school and I never wondered why whenever I put a band aid on it was too light for my skin.

This is a perfect example of white privilege. If you’re white you probably would have never noticed. And if you did you probably blew it off, just like how some one in this room is thinking “Suvee why the hell are you talking about this? There are bigger things happening in the world.”

And yes, I know. To make big changes you have to start with little changes.

There are band aids with spongebob, yoda, ninja turtles and unicorns on them, but they can’t make a brown band aid? The brand even came out with band aids called “ebony aid” in the 90’s but apparently they didn’t sell enough to keep them in the market, yet they still have neon green band aids.

The other is response is “But you can use clear band aids?” The hell I know I can, but so can a white person. But the point is you have a band aid meant for your skin tone, I dont.

I even looked on the Johnson & Johnson facebook and website, and literally they would never put a plain band aid on a darker person, it’s was always some colorful cartoon one,

One thing I struggle with as a women of color, is bra shopping. This might be taboo and uncomfortable for some of you to discuss, but there’s an obvious lack of accessibility to darker bras. It’s so easy to find bras in red and green and all these other colors, but it’s extremely difficult to find a brown bra.

And for the men in this room, you probably are confused as to why I want a brown bra and why this is an issue, but if an individual wants to wear a sheer or white shirt, the least noticable undergarment needs to match your skin tone. So for me since I can never find brown bras I always experiment to figure out what bras don’t show through, but it’s just frustrating that stores can stock up on beige and all these other color bras yet they can’t offer a larger variety of skin tone bras.

In 2015, there were 3 definitions of the word nude according to Merriam Webster Dictionary. The first being “having no clothes on”

Next “of or involving people who have no clothes on”

And the last and possibly the most upsetting definition was “having the color of a white person’s skin.”

Are You Kidding Me.

Having a definition like this is problematic because it promotes the beauty standard that white is the best skin, white is normal skin and that white is more beautiful than the other skin tones

Screenshots of the definitions blew up on websites, on social media, Buzzfeed and in articles leading Merriam Webster finally changing their god damn definition.

This band aid is not nude. White is not nude, and nude is not white. Nude is not a single color, but a state of being and a spaectrum of colors. It’s a color that should include everyone. I want the children that I raise to hear nude and think us not just them. I want them to hear nude and not think white, I want them to hear nude and think everyone. Because nude is not exclusive to just one ethnic group, it’s an inclusive term. Nude is not beige, nude is everyone.

And that, is the naked truth.


 * INSPIRATION: **

T his Buzzfeed video: [|__https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKvB8vrgp5E__] These two wonderful women: [|__https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwGUU5LihHA__] And the last line was inspired by this article: [|__https://www.good.is/articles/nude-skin-dictionary__]