As someone with naturally big lips, everything about the “Kylie Jenner Lip Challenge” feels…bizarre.
Let me take a step back to explain. As a biracial girl, I experienced puberty in a strange way. Since I have the features of both my mom and dad’s side of the family and I’m an only child, there was no one I could look up to in order to attempt to predict how my body would change. Everything was a surprise!
The way I developed curves over one year (which felt like overnight!) and grew a few inches in that same year was unsettling, but no one directly made fun of me for any of these changes. There were other more nuanced ways my body and mind changed during this time, and I think insecurity about my lips was one of them.
So how does all of this relate to the Kylie Jenner Lip Challenge?
I can’t believe people are suctioning their lips to look like #KylieJenner‘s! Terrible! http://t.co/xGioJsQ2Sb pic.twitter.com/k7ul3COYSm
— Perez Hilton (@PerezHilton) April 20, 2015
Aside from this trend being yet another instance where people – mostly young girls – are encouraged to abide by the “beauty is pain” mantra and go to extremes to meet a certain beauty standard, there is also the issue of race and how this particular trend turns the features that some people have naturally into a joke. For example, YouTube user NakedWithoutMyLippy posted a very detailed tutorial on how to achieve lips like Kylie back in February. In the description, she says: “I am obsessed with lips and I’m so curious to see what MASSIVE Kylie Jenner lips would look like on my face.”
It does not seem like NakedWithoutMyLippy was being intentionally malicious or racist in any way, but the fact that someone with naturally thinner lips and other features that measure up to the general Eurocentric standard of beauty in modern society can play around in order to achieve massive lips while laughing about how ridiculous she looks in the process is a lot less funny when you take into account the history of Minstrel Shows in the US.
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