Bo­bie-lee Dixon

Beau­ty has long been mis­rep­re­sent­ed and mis­in­ter­pret­ed. Many be­lieve that if their eyes aren't blue, their noses aren't straight, or even their skin colour isn't light, then they are con­sid­ered to be ug­ly. This no­tion has been re­peat­ed­ly chal­lenged by a num­ber of promi­nent fig­ures like Maya An­gelou, Iyan­la Van­zant, Whoopi Gold­berg and oth­ers who sought to in­stil in young peo­ple es­pe­cial­ly, that they were cre­at­ed beau­ti­ful­ly-all things con­sid­ered. Now Kali­fa Damani can be added to that group of peo­ple. The 22-year-old psy­chol­o­gy ma­jor at UWI has had her fair share of neg­a­tive crit­i­cisms re­gard­ing her phys­i­cal ap­pear­ance. To­day she has plant­ed her feet on pos­i­tive ground and is spear­head­ing The Un-Defin­ing Beau­ty Project-un-defin­ing beau­ty to re­de­fine it, she says.

"The Un-Defin­ing Beau­ty Project is an em­pow­er­ment project aimed at help­ing peo­ple to "get over them­selves" while learn­ing to ap­pre­ci­ate beau­ty. "It is al­so a re­search project, aimed at ex­plor­ing the is­sues sur­round­ing why so many peo­ple have neg­a­tive views on what the 'per­fect' body type is and what can be done to help peo­ple over­come their phys­i­cal in­se­cu­ri­ties and be­lieve in their own gor­geous awe­some­ness."

Feel­ing "un-pret­ty" is dan­ger­ous

Damani staged part one of her se­ries on Un-Defin­ing Beau­ty on Au­gust 6 at the Botan­i­cal Gar­dens, North of the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain. She deemed the event suc­cess­ful as many came out to par­take in a pho­to­shoot/pic­nic in which peo­ple open­ly shared their in­se­cu­ri­ties and al­lowed them­selves to be pho­tographed high­light­ing the body parts they once re­gard­ed as ug­ly. "I al­ways want­ed to work on this project hav­ing had my own ex­pe­ri­ence with in­se­cu­ri­ties but I was in­spired to do it more af­ter meet­ing with two lit­tle girls both eight years old who shocked me with their views on beau­ty when it came to skin colour," ar­tic­u­lat­ed De­mani. "The dark-skinned girl felt that she was ug­ly be­cause she was too dark and was con­stant­ly heck­led by oth­er kids, while the light-skinned girl was afraid to go in­to the sun­light as she was taught that be­ing dark-skinned was not beau­ti­ful.

"Af­ter that ex­pe­ri­ence I re­alised how se­ri­ous this is­sue was and more so the ten­der age in which this false no­tion was be­ing in­stilled in kids, so I pressed on quick­ly to get my first event off the floor." She re­vealed the en­tire project was ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed in no less than a year's time with the fi­nal goal be­ing the pro­duc­tion of a book show­cas­ing and cel­e­brat­ing the di­ver­si­ty of the beau­ty with­in T&T, and en­cour­ag­ing oth­ers to feel good about them­selves.

Vis­it Face­book page Un-Defin­ing Beau­ty, un­defin­ing.beau­ty@gmail.com or call 705-2040.