This Instagram of Lil’ Kim recently set social media ablaze.

Source: Instagram — Photo: @lilkimthequeenbee via Instagram

Critics came out of the woodwork accusing her of trying to look more European and erase her African-American features. People talked about how sad it was that Kim couldn’t appreciate her natural beauty, and had to go through multiple plastic surgeries to become something more acceptable to herself. To that I ask, what of it? It’s interesting to me that we can applaud the hell out of Beyoncé for what she’s doing to illuminate the black woman’s voice and struggle, and in the same breath we ignore the fact that that Lil’ Kim’s current state is a product of that struggle.

Sure, we don’t and will never know many of Kim’s personal struggles, but there are public struggles she has been open about that we are aware of. I’m asking… where is the empathy? Why aren’t we drawing parallels between the work artists are doing to liberate us and the artists who need that very liberation as well? As we continue to shed more light on the need for consistent and compassionate work around mental health in the black community (and specifically for black women), we have to be inclusive. We have to stop treating this as a joke when it’s convenient. We must engage that pain.

A young Kimberly Jones was, by all accounts, beautiful and brash. In 1999, it seemed that the young women who identified with Lauryn were judging the women who identified with Kim, and vice versa. This is how the story goes. Instead of recognizing the parts of us that identify with both, we create this binary existence, where one thing is deemed ‘good’ and the other deemed ‘bad.’ One is deemed ‘classy,’ while the other is deemed ‘ratchet.’ One is ‘woke’ the other is ‘ignorant.’ Both can never be creative, both can never be inventive, both can never be true. But Lil’ Kim is a part of the reality that we’re all going to have to face and deal with. Our struggle with self-love, self-hate and self-esteem is deep and pervasive, and if we continue to treat it as only comedy or if we only accept the cry for help, transformation and healing from certain voices, we will never truly ascend.

That Instagram picture, to me, was as much an indictment of racism and of black women being pummeled with the European standard of beauty being the only acceptable archetype of beauty as Lemonade. If, according to Malcolm X, the black woman is the most disrespected, unprotected, and neglected person in America, then what Lil’ Kim and women who share her struggle (all of us) need is our protection and our attention.

Above all, she deserves our compassion.

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