{"id":929447,"date":"2024-02-22T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-02-22T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=929447"},"modified":"2024-02-22T14:00:00","modified_gmt":"2024-02-22T11:00:00","slug":"leave-my-nyash-alone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=929447","title":{"rendered":"Leave My Nyash Alone"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Learning Curve <\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Leave My Nyash Alone<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n
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To be an African woman is, apparently, to be curvy \u2014 but why?<\/div>\n
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By <\/span>Annie Blay-Tettey<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

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Illustration by Ana Jare\u0301n<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<\/div>\n
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Welcome back to the Learning Curve, a monthly column where we unpack the complicated experience of accepting your own body in a world that doesn’t seem to want you to. This month, associate beauty editor Annie Blay digs into the experience of being an African woman in America and how the differing beauty standards between Africa and the West can create disorienting feelings about body image and cultural authenticity.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cYou have a big butt.\u201d They\u2019re words you don’t often hear out of the mouths of babes, but they glided right off the tongue of an audacious little boy in my third-grade class back in 2007. It had been about a year since I moved from Ghana to Westchester, New York and the differences between me and many of my classmates weren\u2019t hard to pinpoint. My hair was coarse and stiff rather than long and flowy, I spoke with a distinctly un-American accent, and \u2014 according to that observant young man \u2014 my backside was noticeably bigger than others\u2019.<\/p>\n

At that age, I didn\u2019t know what to make of such a statement, but it was one of my first awakenings to the idea of body image. Growing up in Ghana, the women around me were mostly shaped the same: wide hips, big chests, and, of course, big bums; to me, this was normal. Relative to these women, the butt that little boy thought was remarkably big was actually rather small. When I moved to the States and started playing sports alongside girls with whom I couldn\u2019t share clothes and reading magazines and watching movies in which the stars were much thinner than my mom and aunties, my brain assumed that to be Ghanaian was to be shaped one way and to be American was to be shaped another. This conclusion \u2014 and the fact that my body didn\u2019t fit neatly into either category \u2014 brought up an internal dilemma that later down the line would take up more of my time, money, and identity than I could imagine.<\/p>\n

While their experiences may not be identical to mine, many West African women in America deal with body image issues in a way that directly impacts their perceptions and understandings of cultural authenticity. I had never been able to sum up my own feelings about this until speaking with Teen Vogue<\/em> executive director Dani Kwarteng, who grew up in Florida and is also Ghanaian-American. She perfectly encapsulates the matter at hand: \u201cFor the majority of my life, I’ve always been trying to figure out how I show up in spaces to other people.\u201d For many African-American women, our own needs and self-worth get left by the wayside as we prioritize how people from either culture perceive our bodies.<\/p>\n

To Be An African Woman Is, Apparently, to Be Curvy<\/strong><\/h2>\n

\u201cNyash\u201d is the African slang term for butt, ass, derri\u00e8re\u2026 whatever you want to call it. For African women \u2014 West Africans in particular \u2014 there\u2019s an expectation to have an abundance of nyash. A big, rounded butt (with accompanying wide hips) is regarded as the crowning glory that makes you an African woman. This idea is highly emphasized all up and through African culture, especially in our music. Modern African music is rife with language that defines body standards for African women while also objectifying this \u201cideal\u201d body shape.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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As Nigerian Afrobeats artist Wizkid says in his song \u201cBalance,\u201d for example, \u201cShey na for Ghana wey you carry this waist,\u201d which roughly translated from West African Pidgin English means, \u201cYou must be from Ghana the way your body is shaped.\u201d Another Afrobeats artist Rema says it like this in his song \u201cCarry\u201d: \u201cShe carry front\u2026 she carry back\u2026she get hip, and her belly flat,\u201d meaning, \u201cShe has a big chest, she has a big butt, she has hips, and<\/em> a flat stomach.\u201d As you can tell from this profound lyricism, there\u2019s a clear expectation for how African women should be shaped.<\/p>\n

When the African songs that are more popular in America (such as the ones I just mentioned) center on the voluptuous shape of the \u201cclassic\u201d African woman, it only makes sense that the people who engage with that music would expect every African woman they encounter to fit that mold. As an adult, I\u2019ve frequently sensed this in my day-to-day interactions, especially with men. As soon as I mention to one that I\u2019m Ghanaian, they stretch their eyes (and sometimes necks) past my shoulders to see if the back matches the ethnicity. When that would happen in the past, I couldn\u2019t help feeling as if the reality didn\u2019t live up to the expectation.<\/p>\n