Lil' Kim: Diary of a Mirror
by Esther Armah | Ebony.com
'Emotional Justice' warrior Esther Armah ponders about Lil' Kim's—and all of ours—personal relationship with beauty
1996. Damn, even in the mug shot Lil' Kim is pretty. Brown, smooth skin, nice eyes, cute nose. We all checked pictures of the petite rapper and concluded God gave her genes-with-benefits.
No longer. The most recent pics of Lil' Kim remind me of arguments surrounding the merits of plastic surgery and the freedom and right of some to choose to re-arrange their image. Those arguments do indeed exist, but for Generation X and Y in particular, it’s hard to look at the Queen Bee now and make them. We remember when.
Of course, Kim is a grown ass woman making choices, but Black beauty is more than facial features; it is a complicated, precious, powerful living history that includes intimate connections with violence—and is tangled with stories of rejection, privilege, love and lack, favor and hatred. Black beauty’s mirror has never just been our individual reflection staring back at us, it has been a history of a relationship with nations all over the world, their lens on our features and bodies, their opinion, their version of our beauty, how that version has changed and stayed the same over time–the mirror is our intimate revolution.
Lil Kim's transformation isn't new, nor is it news, but I ran across some recent pictures of her and was stopped in my tracks. Not because of any individual feature. But rather because I was looking at a face that was almost other-worldly, alien, unknown, unfamiliar, bearing no resemblance to a self of several years ago. No-one looks like this. Her bone structure—now unrecognizable, carved with seeming self-hate and accentuated with blush—a nose that could stab rather than sniff and eyes permanently on stare. This is hard. That’s why ‘emotional justice’ matters. It’s the term I created to deal with our legacy of untreated trauma that has tumbled down from generation to generation and manifests in all different forms. Black beauty is one of those forms.
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Esther Armah is a NY Radio host, playwright, national best-selling author. ‘Emotional Justice Unplugged’ is her annual arts & conversation series. Follow her on Twitter: @estherarmah #emotionaljustice or Facebook: www.facebook.com/emotionaljustice
