#Blackout: Calling for more diversity in a world dominated by “European” beauty

Yousef Fatehpour

Although Social Media outlets can sometimes be a cesspool of negativity and bullying, #BlackOutDay slapped us in the face with pure beauty, love and self-embracement.

Black Out Day celebrates the fact that Black Appreciation isn’t just a trend that should be condensed into a month, with tweets from pages like the official Girl Scouts’ Twitter or Buzzfeed’s account and thousands of retweets, the movement was a pure success.

“ALL black people are beautiful and worthy of praise and admiration, and Blackout day is a step towards that,” Tumblr user “expect-the-greatest” or T’von, who helped start the movement, posted.

Of course, with things like this there’s always negativity. Some were even asking why there’s no #WhiteOutDay, but these ideas were all quickly shot down by not only black Twitter users, but users of all colors. User @cyberianbreaks tweeted why we don’t need a #WhiteOutDay, with a picture of Google Images searches of words like “Beauty” and “Beautiful Models”, both accompanied by a full first page of white models.

“I’m really sick and tired of seeing the ‘European standard of beauty’ prevail,” T’von said on the website Color the Future. “It’s past time for the beauty of black people to be showcased.”

By noon at March 6, there were already 58,000 tweets. Black Out Day is still going on and on more platforms than just Twitter. The trend has spread from Tumblr to Instagram, Vine and Facebook.

Quite possibly the most powerful post was the one by Tumblr user “eldiabloszone” who, accompanied by a picture of him tearing up with a radiating smile, lists his bisexuality, lack of confidence and hearing disability all as reasons to not post pictures for movements, but states why he made the decision to not do what he usually does.

“However after seeing some pictures of other African-Americans in similar positions as myself…after some thought I built up the courage. Thank you all so much for #blackout.”