Recently, I have noticed bristling debate about whether Michelle Obama is "beautiful", or "ugly".
Opinions vary widely.
I am completely aware that in our society, the concept of feminine "beauty" has a very narrow interpretation, predicated on the physiological, and related to the rules set down by our dominant culture.
The question itself is disturbing, in that despite Mrs. Obama's admirable achievements as a scholar, attorney, activist, loving and dedicated wife and mother, somehow her value is still being assessed in terms of her ability to meet certain culturally-biased criteria for beauty and femininity. It begs disturbing questions that these ideas are at issue. Most disturbing, is that, in my experience, the issue of her "beauty" receives such scant affirmation from the black community itself.
Taste and aesthetics, are shaped and defined by cultural stimuli. The ideas to which we're introduced, that we ingest, and then digest, become our perception of ourselves, and the world. One can't embrace or reject an idea to which one is never introduced. Critical thought carefully examines the idea prior to ingesting it. In metaphorical terms, everything which is tasted, is not to be chewed, and everything which is chewed is not to be swallowed and digested.

No one is under any compulsion, or has the capacity, to explain or justify their sense of beauty, in rational terms. For example, in matters of taste, some people simply like certain flavors of ice cream better than others, for reasons that have no rational basis; in such a case, the subject makes a subjective determination based upon their own experience, independent of undue influence. The process of choice and perception becomes contaminated and fraudulent, when there is intense and subjective indoctrination applied towards the end of creating unmerited favor for one thing in relation to another, and application of arbirtrary superior value.

That having been said, I would submit an idea for general consideration: Perhaps the premise that holds that Mrs. Obama is of marginal attractivness, is due to the fact that the African-American sense of aesthetics has been subjected to and shaped by a culture and experience that is foreign, and on a deeper level, destructive, in that it finds superior beauty the further we are removed from the subsaharan, bantu phenotype, and come closer to a foreign standard.

Cicely Tyson began her career as a fashion model. During a period in this country's cultural history, in the consciousness of many, she was considered to be beautiful. That's an exceedingly difficult idea for many to even begin to comprehend, which, to my mind, as much as validates the premise set forth. Although I fully realize that the perception of "beauty" is constantly in flux, maybe the sense of what is "beautiful", doesn't need to be changed, but broadened, and redefined by the people who intend to apply it to themselves. With the notable exception of a brief period in the 60s, people of African descent have had a sense of beauty and value forcibly imposed on them.

Honey-colored, aquiline-nosed, sandy-haired women like Beyonce' are beautiful black women; they're just not the ultimate embodiment of black beauty or femininity.
I would hope that those of us actively raising, or planning to raise, black daughters would be wary of what the world offers to black women in the area of acceptance and feminine validation.

What is your opnion?