Alesia spoke with makeup enthusiasts Fanta Sylla and Kyrell Grant about their definitions of beauty, their favorite products, and idols.
I come from a flock of deeply pigmented folks with a natural glow and few wrinkles. I lucked out, I’m aware. I’ve always had pretty good skin, but of course, I’m still a living, breathing human with visible pores on my face. And I’m susceptible to sun damage and period breakouts, which lead to hyperpigmentation. Shit happens, and sometimes the effects show up on your face.
My depression and anxiety has manifested itself in a number of self-hating and harmful ways and it becomes easy to convince myself that my appearance is what’s wrong. I recognize that at the root it is often about me not being enough and a desire to somehow become someone other than who I am. It’s easier to believe that my thighs or my skin or my stomach or my hair is what’s causing me so much grief than to confront the fact that something real is wrong and that something is beyond my control.
In an interview for Film Comment, French director Axelle Ropert said that as a director she made films that she felt were missing as a spectator- that she was filling gaps. Though Ropert wasn't talking about racial representation (or the lack thereof), it is the same impulse that prompted UK-based visual artist Cecile Emeke to create Strolling, a series of short documentaries in which the director herself goes on a walk with beautiful black Londoners to talk about various issues ranging from free tampons to European colonization. She took some of her time to answer our questions about this brilliant series and her upcoming short "Ackee & Saltfish." — interviewed by Fanta
My depression and anxiety has manifested itself in a number of self-hating and harmful ways and it becomes easy to convince myself that my appearance is what’s wrong. I recognize that at the root it is often about me not being enough and a desire to somehow become someone other than who I am. It’s easier to believe that my thighs or my skin or my stomach or my hair is what’s causing me so much grief than to confront the fact that something real is wrong and that something is beyond my control.
