Kitty Kelley published a biography of Oprah Winfrey in 2010. You may be thinking what the heck does Oprah’s life story have to do with this philosophy class? I did not think that I would be able to make a connection between the richest Black woman in America and “The Search for Beauty” until I started reading this biography. Oprah was born on January 29th, 1954 in Mississippi where racism was extremely prevalent. As an African American child growing up in the south (in a time before the Civil Rights Movement), Oprah faced challenges that white children her age did not. Oprah grew up feeling inadequate and ugly because of the color of her skin. “Oprah said that she prayed every night to have ringlet curls like Shirley Temple’s. “I wanted my hair to bounce like hers instead of being oiled and braided into plaits with seventeen barrettes.” She tried to reconfigure her nose, “trying to get it to turn up,” by wearing a clothespin to bed every night” (Kitty Kelley, 20). In an interview with Barbara Walters, Oprah admitted to growing up and wanting to be white.
The racist social norms of the South in the early years of Oprah’s life led to her negative self-perception. I find it intriguing how our conception of “beauty” has changed through history in relation to social constructs. Oprah, whom I consider to be an attractive woman, felt that she was not pretty because of the color of her skin. While I do believe that racial and ethnic differences should be acknowledged, I think it is wrong to equate beauty with the color of one’s skin. Oprah felt that she was lesser than white people because she, and fellow African Americans, were treated as subordinates. There is beauty in all of us, regardless of the color of our skin. It took Oprah a long time to come to this realization because as a child she was subjected racism.
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