Category Archive

Africa and its African queens are so unique and beautiful in all of their melanin. It is a land filled with beautiful people and beautiful resources. One who is in tune with nature is in tune with the practice of living, embracing Earth’s beauty. Our bodies are our most sacred spaces, and the vessel for our spirit. Using the body …

I distinctly remember the first comments ever made about my appearance. I must have been two-years-old when a relative asked my fair-skinned mother why it was that I was so much darker than both her and my siblings. Soon after, comments about my sparse, patchy hair and its relatively rougher texture began. As I grew older, many people would ask …

Show me your favourite childhood picture from the early 2000s, and I will show you an era trafficking almost exclusively in clumsiness, where everything is either oversized or ill-fitting, sometimes both. Like say, the trendy jean shorts and the fast-food combos, the haircuts given to unsuspecting Black boys – no ifs, ands, or buts. Back then we weren’t quite what …

Artist Statement  Shaza Tariq Elnour’s Happy Feet is a short retrospective that looks at her work capturing celebrations and events during her role as Marketing Director for the University of Waterloo’s Black Association. The aim of this series is to highlight how community events enabled the positive and joyous communion of Black, African, Afro-Caribbean, and Caribbean communities in Waterloo-Kitchener. The …

I often think of the elder Sudanese women around me when I think of their resilience to stand in beauty. I think of my mother, my haboba (grandmother), and of my aunts. I think of the way they have gracefully embraced tradition throughout generations—specifically the tradition of the Sudanese toub from its vibrant colours to the way it elegantly flows …

You can find bleaching products in Nigeria in just about any beauty store. In 2011, the World Health Organization (WHO) cited that approximately 77 per cent of women in Nigeria bleach their skin. I was one of them. This is how I got there and, eventually, how I quit for good. Skin bleaching entails using creams, oral supplements, or injections …

Black women should abandon racial activism, to attain their dreams – it is not my job to go into this space, it is not my job to revolutionize this space, it is my job to enjoy it.   I am sitting on my couch in my flat in Berlin retelling the events of my day to my wife Deidre while our …

For the longest time, I would stare at my bare pierced ear lobe in the mirror after stacking necklaces around my neck. I was nonchalant about wearing earrings as I couldn’t find any reason to wear them; I had not felt any sentimental value or sense of connection towards any earrings.. Our outer appearance – the clothing and the adornments …

To the Rudasumbwa—Dusabimana Matriarch: Thank you for teaching me—in subtlety—to embrace the beauty of the little moments.  I remember Saturday mornings with you, as we got ready for church. The weekends that we the cousins would spend with our grandmother. You’d wake us up early to bathe (bucket and water style), have breakfast, and then the dreaded hair combing fiasco …

The moment a woman becomes aware of herself and begins understanding the world, she goes to war to gain freedom and autonomy over the vessel she walks the earth in. From the images we see on television and in magazines to our society’s cultural practices and beliefs, women are consistently told what they should define as beauty. In some African …