His article, posted Sunday afternoon, drew so much Internet traffic after heating up Facebook and Twitter that the Psychology Today website was practically disabled. By Monday afternoon, the posting, with all of its pretty graphs and wacky conclusions, had been taken down.
The folks at Psychology Today did not return calls, but its editor-in-chief, Kaja Perina, did e-mail NPR. "Our bloggers are credential[ed] social scientists and for this reason they are invited to post to the site on topics of their choosing," Perina wrote. "We in turn reserve the right to remove posts for any number of reasons."
It's not that black women are psychologically damaged by such a flimsy study. Psycho-babble about black beauty is nothing new. And beauty-bashing black women isn't limited to outsiders. Sometimes it's from black men or worse, from within.
Nor does it matter that obviously attractive women such as Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey, and Halle Berry are at the center of mainstream media. It is not news to black women that beauty magazines often ignore them, and that designers are loath to use black models on the runway.
Black women understand the subjectiveness of fashion, and have for a while. That is why many will tell you they believe they are beautiful despite what anyone says. Weight, hair texture, complexion - all factors that have been used to rate them less beautiful in the past - just don't matter.
But now, it's time for it to be tuned out.
"If black women take this on as a reasonable argument or assumption, we would be taking on other people's baggage," said Helen Miller, a retired director of public services for the Free Library of Philadelphia. Miller is African American, and with her clear ebony skin and bouncing pageboy, most people would say she was pretty.
