Gabrielle Union believes the battle against colorism starts at home.
While at Essence Fest last weekend, Gabrielle spoke to Refinery 29 and shared a story about how she had to have a real conversation with her three boys (stepsons Zaire and Zion, and husband Dwyane Wade’s nephew, Dahveon, who lives with them) after she noticed they only responded to light-skinned girls on social media.
via Refinery 29:
In a recent conversation with them, she asked the teens about the hottest girls at their high school, and requested to see their Instagram pages. “Literally, probably about 10 girls I looked at had the same light skin, curly hair, tiny waist, butt, boobs — it was the same girl over and over again,” she says. “So I asked them to show me the most beautiful chocolate sister they’ve seen. They say there are none. I was like, ‘Why do they get exed out so fast? What is happening in your brain that is causing you to look at these women through a prism that is distorting their actual selves?'”
To prove a point, Union showed them Ryan Destiny‘s Instagram. “They’re like, ‘Oh, she bad!’ But do you know how many Ryan Destinies there are? I pull up every Black model, women from all over the world, and they’re beautiful. But they don’t see the beauty unless it comes from an actress or a supermodel or a video vixen. They have to have somebody else tell them that a chocolate woman is attractive for them to believe it.”
To read more from Gabrielle’s interview with Refinery 29, click here.
