I don't hold entertainers to these high standards or think they should be who our kids look to as role models, but they are in the spotlight and reflect what our society's values are.
And Ne-Yo seems to have the beauty views of a recently freed slave. He was being interviewed by a radio host who happened to be white. She got excited when she learned he was single and said she wants him all to himself.
His response:
"All the prettiest kids are light-skinned anyway."
As I said, I don't expect more from entertainers to be these intellectuals but I did hope for more from Ne-Yo. He definitely said nothing like that when I interviewed him for ESSENCE.com and gave him his props on giving Independent women due praise, not that that's surprising.
It's in plain sight that light is the preference in women in hip hop and pop culture. But It's still a little off putting to hear people say it out loud. And a non-light skin brother at that. I don't think his skin color has anything to do with how people view Ne-Yo's attractiveness. As I type this, Beauty Shop just went off and Snoop's reality show came on and I completely love the fact his little girl is as brown as they come.
As a chocolate girl myself, I honestly never felt any less pretty because of my skin (much to the surprise of some). And maybe my self-esteem is so locked when it comes to pigment is of my mom, who happens to pass the brown bag test, and because I understand society's color issues are a direct link to slavery and the inferiority complex placed on our people that Black was a negative, thus the closer you are to white the better you are. To believe light is better is to believe in the premise that Black is bad.
Denene's post on staying out of the sun as a kid made me thoughtful of my own childhood as I spent Georgia summers playing jump rope, playing hop scotch, jumping on trampolines, catching lightning bugs and everything else until the street lights came on.
Guess for Ne-Yo his love of Michelle Obama and Gabrielle Union are the exceptions. Just makes me that much more thankful for our new president and first lady.
Maybe Ne-Yo thought that the women who read Essence wouldn't hear that radio interview, so he was just "playing to his audience."
Or maybe he was telling the world about his own self-esteem issues that he was too proud to admit to a large audience of black women.