The Souls of Black Girls

Now that my computer has fully recovered from it's run in with the cyber H1N1 virus, I'm back to my regular scheduled surfing. First stop Facebook, where one of my favorite bloggers, Nichelle of 55 Secret Street and Anovolista.com posted a story out of the UK about a Black woman/mother who traveled thousands of miles to Panama to undergo a risky surgery to change the color of her eyes from brown to blue. I guess I don't have to tell you how that story turned out, but if you're interested check out the link. Then there was the big Tyra Banks season premier. Black women everywhere were sitting in front of the television prepared to celebrate "real hair" only to discover that Tyra's definition of "real" was long, permed, fried and laid to the side. While I do commend her for taking the first step, I like Afrobella, assumed "real" meant "natural". Then there was the Monday's Oprah ( a rerun from 2008) that looked at the how women around the world define beauty. I was shocked to find that hundreds of thousands of Iranian women choose to get nose jobs to "fix" their round noses, not to be outdone by the women of Mauritania who force feed little skinny girls to fatten them up to make them more appealing to men. Although I don't agree with the method, it was refreshing to discover there's a place on earth where the standard of beauty is nothing like our euro-centric ideal. All of this talk about beauty got me to thinking about how African American girls (and women) self esteem and image are being influenced by images in the media. This question was also presented by director Daphne S. Valerius in her documentary The Souls of Black Girls. Join me on Thursday at 8:00am ET as we discuss the movie and our personal experiences as little Black girls growing up in America.

In case you missed it: Click here for a download of the full interview.

Cocoa Mode in the Eagles Nest airs every Thursday at 8:00am on XM 169 and on WOL-AM 1450 in Washington DC.