Black Women’s Search For Self-love In The Novel On Beauty By Zadie Smith

“Guys always cheated on me with women who were European-looking. You know, the long-hair type…. ‘How can I compete with that?’ Being a regular black girl wasn’t good enough.” -Kimberly Denise Jones

On Beauty by Zadie Smith follows the lives of the Belsey and Kipps family and the struggles they face not only with each other but with themselves. In particular, the main black female characters, Kiki Besley, Zora Besley, Carline Kipps, and Victoria Kipps, who are all struggling with loving themselves due to society telling them multiple times that their beauty and their self-love will never suffice.

This novel goes through the stories of each woman and how they deal with society’s strict beauty norms whether or not the way that they deal with such external and internal conflict is detrimental to their self-esteem. Zadie Smith utilizes the back female characters and their relationships to emphasize how society’s singular definition of beauty has been passed down generation to generation, overall stunting and damaging black women’s relationships because one must find love within themselves before searching for it elsewhere.

Kiki is a mom to three children, one being a girl named Zora who she sees fights with the same beauty standards she tries to live up to everyday. Kiki notices how that same fight may be even worse in the modern days. The mother, Kiki, bans television, lipsticks, and magazines from their home to shelter her daughters from the threat of the beauty industry. But as she reveals, her efforts make little difference in the end. That’s because, “It was in the air, or so it seemed to Kiki, this hatred of women and their bodies” (Smith 197). Zora is looking at herself in the mirror and just completely trashing her appearance and her looks. Her mom stands there seeing her daughter thinking that who she is amounts to what people see visibly crushes her heart and illustrates how that it is much harder for black females to love themselves these days due to all the media that surrounds them from a young age showing them what ‘perfect’ looks like.

The messages that society deem should be Bible for black women are sent through multiple mediums and dug into everything. Black are left no choice but to bring these terrible ideas and beliefs home, inhale them off the newspapers, magazines and television screens, the entire media. Then exhale them into their everyday actions, everyday speech, and everyday thoughts. These spiteful messages are carved into the souls of women everywhere, made as a code in their hushed constitutions. This quote so poetically paints the unavoidable lifestyle of women that resonates with them so deeply. 'This hatred of Black women and their bodies' invades any and all of their space, leaving ‘safe spaces’ as just a mystical dream, a fantasy.

This exact hatred is what “Smith prompts (black women) to take an invitation” to leave behind and take the chance that has been denied from them for so long. The chance to finally “be (themselves) to the fullest” (Moraru 1). Zora, like many young black females in this age, is not able to do that. They are not able to turn from the norms that plagues their screens, magazines, and even human nature to fit in. That is why Kiki, who has been through similar experiences, tries her best to shield her from any kind of depiction of these destabilizing beauty norms. However as Moraru said it is up to Zora to finally see the beauty she has and not the beauty she thinks she must achieve. Black mothers can try their hardest to force their black daughters to ignore these blonde haired blue eyed ideals but at a certain point sadly that daughter is going to have to discover how twisted these norms are on their own.

Kiki’s relationship with Howard acts as a looking glass into the society pressured complex relationship with a black woman. Their relationship deals with all the expected norms society forces not only on black women but as well as how they should act in a relationship When kiki and howard have sex fro the last time they no it does not feel right but they do not care, for that “starburst of pleasure and (have) love and beauty” take over (Smith 397). Kiki and Howard have sex for the last time and with that both have many things going through their minds about how this final intercourse is nowhere near the same as the ones in the past. Kiki and Howard’s bodies no longer connect and are no longer comfortable with each other. This highlights the meaning of how “long” marriage can be, emphasizing the impact time has on anything and everything. It also depicts how diffrent women and men are specifically their inability to explain their wants and dislikes when it comes to having sex. Kiki enduring all that she has as a black female in such a white centric world, it makes sense that she would have such a difficult time for this long to speak her mind in a world that deems not only her boy but as well as her existence undesirable. Kiki had tried to use metaphors to show Howard what she wanted in sex and the entire relationship but has now come to see how useless the metaphors have always been

Kiki is “250 pounds and black and ( Howard’s) mistress is a skinny white girl.” This makes all matters worse, for Kiki already “feels trapped in a white world” (Watman1). Kiki, who has ballooned to 250 pounds, resents Howard for not accepting her as she is and for drawing her into an almost exclusively white world that often feels alien to her. Watman touches into a much deeper concept then Kiki feeling alone and unloved in her body, for now we see that she feels alone and unloved in the place she felt dragged into. Howard being a white male leaves him ignorant to how his wife is feeling. Also due to all the prejudices Kiki faces it is difficult for her to voice her opinions in a world that has been telling her to remain quiet since she was born.

Black Women with other women

“Everything I do I do with my body. Even my soul is made up of raw meat, flesh. Truth is in a face, as much as it is anywhere. We women know that faces are full of meaning, I think. Men have a gift of pretending that’s not true. And this is where their power comes from. Monty hardly knows he has a body at all” (Smith 96).

This is a conversation between Kiki and Carlene discussing the differences between men and women. Kiiki takes this comment from Carlene as her trying to say that women are much more emotional causing them to be less intellectual driven as well as capable than men. Kiki being the feminist that she is bristles at the comment. However, as the readers are introduced to more and more stories and discussions in the book, it’s clear that Smith stands by that comment. It’s transparent that women in this book are very concerned with their bodies and physical appearances that it takes over any and all decisions that they may make.

On Beauty by Zadie Smith follows the lives of these black women who are all struggling with loving themselves due to society telling them multiple times that their beauty and their self-love will never suffice. Zadie Smith by utilizing the back female characters and their personal relationships emphasizes how society’s singular definition of beauty has been passed down generation to generation, overall stunting and damaging black women’s relationships. She illustrates through the many failures of relationships of the black female characters the much needed transformation society must go through to allow all women to love themselves and, in result, successfully love others.