We’ve Been Here Before
There’s power in the ordinary. In honoring a woman who doesn’t perform, doesn’t aspire to be “iconic,” doesn’t cater to commercialized aesthetics, we affirm that everyday Black women deserve to be seen. Not just when we’re glammed up, not only when we’re trailblazing, not because we’ve overcome.
Just because we exist.This isn’t a new concept. The “Black is Beautiful” movement of the 1960s dared to say the same thing. Back then, the Grandassa Models didn’t need Hollywood polish to walk runways in Harlem. They were aunties, students, and secretaries. They were women who wore their natural hair and full figures with pride. The point wasn’t glamour. It was presence.
The Times Square statue continues that legacy. Yet the fact that it sparked such controversy shows how far we still are from embracing it.
We’re Still Editing Ourselves
We like to believe we’ve evolved. That “body positivity” includes everyone. However, when a Black woman with full features and a soft midsection can’t be cast in bronze without national mockery, then we’re not as evolved as we think.
We don’t have to agree on whether the statue is beautiful in a conventional sense. We should ask ourselves why the lack of convention makes us so uncomfortable. Why do we still cling to the idea that Black representation requires perfection?
What Thomas J. Price created was a mirror. It reflects the faces we pass on the street and the ones we often overlook. It reflects the parts of ourselves we’ve been taught to edit, hide, or reshape. For some, that’s hard to sit with. However, that’s also where the work begins. If we want a world that truly values Black women—beyond performance, beyond pain, beyond polish—we have to include everyone. That includes the loud and the quiet, the bold and the bashful, the glamorous and the ordinary.
When we tear down this statue, we’re reinforcing the lie that some of us are more worthy of visibility than others. Until we unlearn that, we’ll keep building pedestals for ideals and ignoring the real women already standing tall.
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