Have you ever wondered just how beautiful someone would have to be for them to be regarded as the definition of beauty? How beautiful in every sense did the Queen of Sheba have to be to command such adoration? To be the image of legend even now. How beautiful could a woman be that she is the pinnacle of beauty for eternity?
The world expects you to engage in constant rivalry with women. They exist largely as your competition in a battle of beauty. Excluding any internal substance, such as intellect or thought, the initial fight is one of charm. In a world where your beauty is a weapon, it’s hard to believe one could exist with no competition. I struggle to imagine a woman walking through life as the unquestionable, reigning beauty. But despite my own limitations, they say she once did. The Queen of Sheba was intelligent, incomparably beautiful, and impossibly wealthy. She was the purest form of beauty, unsullied by human imperfection. She was, for all intents and purposes, perfect. Her perfection grew into legend and eventually turned into myth. And perhaps that’s all she was. Myth.
Upon asking my initial questions, the answer I received was simple. Makeup. You can make anything appear near perfect with a few hours, some products, and a brush. This answer left me with another question. Can you create pure unadulterated, unrivaled beauty with makeup? How does one even define such beauty? I know there are a lot of questions, and I’m not providing many answers, but I can say this. When you google “the most beautiful women of all time,” the only appearances the African continent makes are regarding ancient, fair-skinned queens of Greek descent. There’s no question that these women are beautiful. But it can’t be that the most beautiful women of all time are all versions of Audrey Hepburn and Sophia Loren. Even taking into consideration the recent acknowledgment of darker-skinned beauty, they make up a very small percentage. On a list of 20 women, you’ll likely find no more than 3 darker-skinned black women. No amount of makeup is going to make a black woman look white. No amount of makeup can make you something you aren’t. And unlike the possible myth of the Queen of Sheba, all kinds of black women are undoubtedly real.
Around the 3rd century, the Queen of Sheba, alternatively referred to as Makeda, was described as black. That view is largely the same. While she may have been Ethiopian or Somali, many who know her story will think of her as Black. This woman, so commonly associated with pure beauty, as the Greeks did with Aphrodite, serves as a reminder. This woman, intelligent, wealthy, and righteous in her own right, celebrated by religion, remembered as beauty in its truest form, was black. Whether or not she was real is, at this stage, unimportant. Her legacy shoulders the burden of our own self-assessment and allows us to see ourselves in the vast desert that often exists before us, serving as an oasis of comfort and offering the simplest of reminders. Beauty is everything, and it is nothing. As we rely on the feeble cowardice that is public opinion, beauty will forever mean nothing and everything. And I’ve chosen for it to be both.

Photo by Olamide Olanrewaju on Unsplash