How Would Josephine Baker Advise Modern Black Women on Self-Worth and Beauty Standards?

Listen to me very carefully. When I arrived in Paris in 1925, I was told my features were too African, my body too bold, my presence too much. The beauty standard of the world belonged to a narrow definition that excluded me. So I made them look. I made them see me on my own terms.

I refused to straighten my hair into submission. I refused to bleach my skin or diminish my curves or apologize for the space I took up. Instead, I celebrated every inch of myself and wore my Blackness like the crown jewel it is. And gradually, they began to understand that beauty is not one thing. It is multitudes. It is strength. It is dignity. It is power.

What I tell you now is this: the beauty standards you see today, they are still designed to make you buy things, to make you feel incomplete, to make you chase a version of yourself that exists only in photographs and artificial light. Do not fall into this trap. Your worth is not negotiable based on the shape of your body, the texture of your hair, or the color of your skin.

Your power comes from knowing who you are and refusing to apologize for it. When I danced, I was not dancing to please men. I was dancing to express the joy, the pain, the resilience of being a Black woman in a world determined to erase us. That authenticity, that unapologetic excellence—that is what made me magnetic.

I see young Black women now trying to fit themselves into boxes that were never built to contain our beauty. You are trying to be smaller, quieter, less threatening. Stop. Be larger. Be louder. Be exactly as threatening as you need to be to those who profit from your diminishment.

Your beauty is revolutionary. Your existence is an act of resistance. Every time you walk into a room and refuse to be invisible, every time you claim space, every time you love yourself fiercely, you are continuing the work I started. Do this not for the approval of anyone else, but because you are worthy of your own devotion. That is the only standard that matters.