‘Glowing up ain’t easy’ How #BlackGirlMagic created an innovative narrative for black beauty through Instagram

Within a patriarchal and racist society, Western standards of beauty are detrimental to all women. However, in a society where the White male gaze has been able to determine what is beautiful, possessing features that are similar to White women has become the standard to embody. These beauty ideals are reinforced by family, peers, mainstream media, and can have adverse impacts on the lives of women. Black women are particularly impacted because their phenotypical features are often furthest from those of White women. As a result, a significant number of Black women suffer from self-hatred and internalised racism because they can never truly embody White women’s standards of beauty. However, within our technologically driven era, social media provides a platform for self-expression and empowerment. Through social media applicationssuch as Instagram, Black women are now provided with a platform to navigate the intersections of popular media and beauty standards. This paper focuses on the hashtag #BlackGirlMagic that contributed to the creation of an innovative narrative to Black beauty and counternarrative to White beauty standards within Instagram. The paper draws from the study that utilised a qualitative method, namely a content analysis of specific content from Instagram that used the hashtag #BlackGirlMagic. The content comprised of four themes: hair, complexion, body image, and self-affirmation. By highlighting the space that Black women have created for themselves, this study offers an analysis of images and captions that are intersectional, transnational, and non-hierarchical. The ultimate aim of the study is to join other Black feminist work that encourages Black women to dissect the convoluted images that do not match their image of Black femininity