Reclaiming Identity in an Age of Excess

Oh, good. Another day, another opportunity to discuss how we are all doing just fine. There is a conversation we are not having loudly enough. It sits beneath the surface of curated feeds, behind the filtered selfies, and under the fluorescent lights of cosmetic clinics. It is a conversation about identity, ancestry, and the quiet violence we do to ourselves when we chase a beauty standard that was never ours to begin with. But sure, let us keep pretending this is all just a vibe.

To be a Black woman who wears the hair of a white woman is not merely a style choice. It is a statement. Groundbreaking, I know. To go under the knife to alter one's features toward a more Eurocentric ideal is not just a procedure. It is a confession. And we need to start calling these things what they are. Not preferences. Not harmless fun. But symptoms of a deeper disease. Wild concept, right?

Let me be clear. Adorning yourself is not evil. Playing with makeup, trying new hairstyles, wearing extensions are ancient human practices. I do them myself. Shocking, I know. The problem is not adornment. The problem is the *excessiveness* of this era. The problem is when the fake becomes the foundation. When nails, hair, lashes, and skin are all manufactured to the point where the natural self is unrecognizable. When the goal is no longer to enhance but to erase. But hey, if the goal is to look like a walking filter, mission accomplished.

We are living in a time where many Black women are striving to look like a caricature of femininity, a hyper exaggerated, plasticized version that was never derived from our own culture. This beauty standard was not built by us or for us. It was borrowed, imposed, and then sold back to us as "baddie culture." And we bought it. We normalized it. We called it empowerment. Because nothing says "I love myself" like spending a down payment on a face that belongs to someone else's ancestor.

But is it empowerment to look in the mirror and not recognize your ancestors? Is it freedom to spend thousands of dollars trying to approximate a face and body that nature never gave you? The answer is uncomfortable, but it is clear. Something is deeply wrong. But please, do go on about how it is all just self care.

This is Babylon. Not in a literal sense, but in the spiritual and cultural sense. It is a system that profits from your insecurity, that tells you your natural self is insufficient, and then sells you the remedy at a premium. It is a system that normalizes perversion and calls it progress. And the most frightening part? People no longer see it as perversion at all. They see it as normal. They see it as the standard. They see it as cool. What a time to be alive.

When perversion becomes normalized, we have crossed a line. When self rejection is celebrated as self expression, we have lost our way. This is not about judging individuals. It is about recognizing a collective crisis. We are raising generations to believe that their faces, their hair, their bodies are projects to be fixed rather than gifts to be accepted. We are teaching them to owe themselves nothing but dissatisfaction. But sure, let us call that empowerment and keep scrolling.

The scary truth is that we live in a time where people cannot see the problem because the problem has become the air they breathe. But we must start asking harder questions. Why do we feel the need to look like someone else? Why do we equate excess with beauty? And why are we so afraid to simply look like ourselves? Crazy questions, I know. Take your time.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to feel beautiful. But there is everything wrong with believing you are not beautiful as you were made. The mirror should reflect a person, not a product. And until we reclaim that truth, we will remain trapped in a Babylon of our own making, paying for chains and calling them jewelry. But hey, at least the lashes look good, right?