I’m not the greatest poet, in fact I’d go as far to say I don’t read a lot of poetry.   However, I started writing this poem last year in response to an article by New York Times journalist Alessandra Stanley, in which she called Shonda Rimes an angry black woman and Viola Davis  “less classically beautiful.”

Viola Davis eloquent response says it all.

I’m glad that Shonda Rhimes saw me and said “Why not?” That’s what makes her a visionary. That’s what makes her iconic. I think that beauty is subjective. I’ve heard that statement [less classically beautiful] my entire life. Being a dark-skinned black woman, you heard it from the womb. And “classically not beautiful” is a fancy term for saying ugly. And denouncing you. And erasing you. Now … it worked when I was younger. It no longer works for me now. It’s about teaching a culture how to treat you. Because at the end of the day, you define you.

So that is how I came to write I Believed.

I Believed

An innocuous whisper at first it seemed

Until it reached susceptible ears.

You’re not classically beautiful,

Proclaimed a voice of Privilege

Carried on a wind of denigration

Spreading its virulent tentacles

Until I believed the lie they told

It bound me in chains

Lost me in the quagmire of shame

My being misses the gauge

My brown skin not pale enough

My butt too big, my thighs too thick

Beauty is a rake thin stick.

A body of lines and not curves like mine

A head of flaxen locks, my braids denied

An ideal some fake, with bleached skin and blonde weave

The chains squeezed me tight

Until there was no more fight

My resounding silence, spoke of shame

That burrowed too deep to name

I awoke, and the scales fell from my eyes

The cotton wool fell from my ears

I shook off the shackles that confined and defined

And instead I tried and I strived

For a better version of I

© September 2014 Sade Adeniran