Fake butts, fake breasts, fake noses, fake lips, fake hair, fake waistlines, fake eyelashes, fake, fake, fake. Fake is the new real when it comes to celebrity beauty. Whereas a weave used to be shocking, now it’s more unusual to see a famous woman with a perm or her own hair. Big butts and lips used to be frowned upon by white Hollywood, but now stars are lining up to get who-knows-what injected to plump up their behinds and puckers. With all of this fakeness and enhancement parading itself as normal, it really means something when the wheels of celebrity gossip come to a screeching halt and we all declare, "Oh, no she didn't!!!"

Yes, Tiny, we are talking about you.
Wife of T.I. and star of various hit reality shows, Tameka "Tiny" Harris, has decided to change her eye color...forever. Along with an Instagrammed photo of herself that showed off her baby blues, she wrote this caption: "I permanently changed my eye color with Brightoccular and loving it!! Thank you Dr. Montasser Menif for the amazing experience and for making my dreams come true. I hated wearing contacts just for the color and it made my vision blurry. Blessed to say my vision is perfect after my ice-gray implants." 

The post has been deleted, but the chatter won't die down. What does it mean that a Black woman has decided to give herself blue eyes? Is it self-hate, people are asking, or is it her money and her eyes to do with however she wants? 

Wendy Williams said on-air that Tiny went “too far.” There seems to be something ironic about a woman who has had surgery and never appears on television showing her real hair to call someone else out for changing their appearance. Yet Williams is not alone — eye color seems to be the crossing line between normal celebrity enhancements and cosmetic surgery crazy town.  

Everyone wanting to put Tiny down seems to forget that her looks have been a constant conversation and more times than not she is being called unattractive. Ugly. That she pulled a real coup getting with someone as attractive as T.I. For literally two decades, her looks have been disparaged publicly, ever since the debut of her former singing group Xscape. Yet this woman, who has had to hear a non-stop barrage of criticism about her appearance, is somehow supposed to magically rise above it and not consider making changes? She is supposed to be an active part of an entertainment industry that encourages women to manipulate their bodies and faces through surgeries, add-ons and other procedures to make themselves look like everyone else. Difference is not celebrated and anything considered unattractive is not tolerated.

Maybe this isn’t why Tiny did it. Maybe she has just always liked blue eyes. Maybe she is just like us, a product of a world that is trying really hard to strip away any racial meaning to things like straight hair, larger butts, blue eyes and full lips — a culture that insists that beauty is like a Mister Potato Head doll, interchangeable pieces that we can try on without any context or meaning.

It’s a dangerous road to go down. Little girls need to understand that how they look is beautiful, not fixable. Little boys need to stop thinking there is only one acceptable standard of beauty. Everyone, regardless of age, needs to stop believing that being beautiful is the big prize for which we should all strive, that it is what will bring happiness and contentment. If nothing else, Tiny’s eyes could be the starter for a conversation we should all be having about how far is too far in the pursuit of a goal that is abstract, dangerous and potentially empty.

The opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of BET Networks.



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