“Jealousy we understood and thought was natural— a desire to have what somebody else had; but envy was a strange, new feeling for us. And all the time we knew that Maureen Peal was not the Enemy and not worthy of such intense hatred. The Thing to fear was the Thing that made her beautiful, and not us.”
-Toni Morrison. The Bluest Eye. (pg.74). 1970.
Photo Credits: Cecilia Marty
This piece is a meditation comparison. As women, we sit in front of the mirror comparing ourselves to the other women around us. Here I focused on comparison in the racial sense. Growing up in a white family in the suburbs with white media, I wished for nothing more than to have blonde hair, blue eyes, long eyelashes, and the double eyelids I saw on all the women around me and in every magazine. Women of color are almost always pitted against the so-called “purity” of the white woman. The woman of color is always deemed the alternative or the other woman and women of color must always deal with the idea that white women will almost always be king no matter what culture or country in the world you visit. But as stated above, the thing to blame is not the white woman or her beauty, but what makes her beautiful and not the other women of the world.
And She Couldn’t be More Different From Me (2024) - 2 panels, 30”x 40”. Oil on canvas.