What isn't apparent to some of you in this thread at first glance is the pressure of US beauty standards/what is seen as beautiful in the United States, and how it affects black women growing up in the United States. Example, many black women in the United States straighten their hair/alter the appearance of their hair in order to make their hair follow US beauty standards for what is considered "
Good Hair" vs allowing their hair to grow naturally since it is different from what is acceptable. Not only are many of these processes not good for their hair, but they spend thousands of hours and dollars doing it, just so they can feel more beautiful than they do with their natural hair.
And this is just one small example. Even on GAF we have topics like
"Black women less physically attractive than other women." or
online dating topics where studies show black women the least desirable for the average man, or as some GAFer's put it "I don't like dating black women, it's just my preference". These are all just small tastes of how hard it is for a black woman to grow up in the United States and be seen as beautiful when society is constantly telling them they need to look more like white women, whether it's a top 50 beautiful women list where only one black person is on it at number 48, or the guy that says "You're pretty for a black girl" as if it's a compliment.
In the case of Lil Kim, many of us are thinking about examples like above as the reason why Lil Kim felt she had to alter her physical appearance to be more beautiful. Yes, if we think in a "vacuum" as one poster put it, we should be happy that Lil Kim is happy with her new look. But life doesn't work in a vacuum, and different situations have different context and history that shouldn't be ignored. While bullying/making fun of Lil Kim isn't necessary, we also shouldn't necessarily be "supportive" when these pressures in US society may be the root cause and instead speak more about these problems.