Remembering Naomi Sims…
August 5, 2009 by Angry Black Bitch
Naomi Sims, beauty pioneer and the first black model to appear on the cover of Ladies’ Home Journal, has died.
Naomi Sims was beautiful and a successful businesswoman.
Getting the fashion world to acknowledge that did more than fling open the door of opportunity for future Naomis and it did more than present a beautiful black woman to America.
There was a time before Sims, where the beauty ideal was actually a societal declaration that what we are was not what beauty is…and there was the time after Sims, still dominated by a beauty standard sans diversity but no longer absent a challenge to that shit.
Many will dismiss the importance of Naomi Sims as long lost history. Others will dismiss the role of fashion.
But I will always remember seeing her picture, so lovely and brown, and thinking she was beautiful…not beautiful despite her color but beautiful having embraced it. And I know that had a positive impact on how I viewed my chocolate brown self.
Naomi Sims was 61 years old.
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I followed her carrer from the 1970’s on. I patterned my clothes styles after her, and makeup as well. She was regal, statuesqe and the essence of class. Her elegance will not be forgotten, Rest in peace my ebony queen!
You said it all perfectly Jackie. Thank you for your thoughts on this wonderful lady.
She believed in herself when HATERS told her that a black woman could never get anywhere in the fashion world. Look at what she did. She triumphed! God Bless Naomi.
Amen to that sentiment Jackie. She triumphed is right.