It is fun to go to Sephora because I mean, yay makeup, but anytime I am there I have to deal with hostile White women. I’ve written about how White women consistently try to dominate my physical space and conversations with Black women offline and consistently interrupt and derail my conversations with Black women online. It is consistent and unrelenting. (I also wrote about how White “allies” regularly engage in behaviors that reek of entitlement and are meant to dominate space, ideas, content and conversations in 10 Ways That White Feminist and White Anti-Racism Allies Are Abusive To Me In Social Media.)

This seems to heighten whenever I am at Sephora, M•A•C or Ulta. I am sure that you can guess why. Those spaces are associated with aesthetic conceptions of beauty and however good or flawed these conceptions are (which I critique a lot in my essay compilation On Beauty Politics), those spaces feel like passive aggressive or aggressive battle grounds. Some White women behave as if I have no business being there appearing confident and with an aesthetic that defies the dominant construction of aesthetic beauty. I mean, I’ve dealt with White women who think any visual disinterest in a more Eurocentric appearance is an “attack” on White women. The oppression of White supremacy is so pervasive that rejecting it is deemed “harming” White women despite them being centered in every and any notion of visual beauty and despite beauty itself being constructed as inherently anti-Black. Some White women have suggested that Gradient Lair is “against” them because the images here (on this free, personal blog, not mainstream media or major media outlet) are of Black women. Some even want to dominate natural hair spaces for Black women while making sure we remained excluded in mainstream spaces. I really wanted to be out with my BFF at Sephora yesterday without a problem (life is pretty stressful and well, terrible right now; a few hours of fun with my BFF was needed) but I’ve never really occupied physical public space without Whites/men interrupting, trying to dominate my conversations or space, engage in unwanted touching or some other form of harassment.

My BFF and I stood in a tight circle with a Black woman who worked there and discussed some foundation choices when a White woman moved her body in between us and the aggression mirrored the street harassment that I experience from men when they try to dominate my space. (I’ve never been able to speak to Black women in public without Whites/men doing something to infer domination anyway.) I really cannot believe that this woman did this; used her body like weapon. Her voice was raised loudly and she was certainly too physically close to me for us to be strangers; I could practically smell her breath. Now, her actual comment was simple, was about my earrings. But why the interruption? Why the need to physically dominate? Who shoves their body in between three people standing closely when there is space to go around? This type of aggression is something that I experience regularly from White women in public. When I add this to their issues of touching Black women’s hair and bodies without consent (while they ironically decry being touched by men without consent), all it does is parallel some of the behaviors that street harassing men do.

Of course I experience worse at the hands of men in terms of public threat and men pose a greater threat of immediate physical violence. (I have noted some specific parallels in behaviors between White women’s microaggressions and Black men’s street harassment where my Black womanhood is concerned; but that’s for another day to discuss.) But to ignore the way White women can physically dominate space and verbally harm yet can rely on White supremacist notions of their “delicate” womanhood, White Tears™ and “threats” to their “purity” by involvement with Blackness, the construction of White womanhood can be and is regularly used as a weapon against Black women and Black people in general. This has been clear whether through White Tears™ to claims that Black women are “toxic” for not accepting racism to false accusations of crime by Black people (with dire consequences for Black people, up to and including State violence as a result).

Every single time I have visited Sephora, I have been interrupted, “bumped” into, walked into, or have had a White woman actually use her body to try to dominate my space. And since so many types of women and other people visit that store, I find it interesting that these things only happens with White women. One came to stand over us and interrupt us as I was getting an eyebrow tutorial while out with my BFF yesterday. Once at Ulta my sister mentioned a lip liner pencil I should try. The White woman near it immediately grabbed all of the remaining pencils of that shade so that none would be left for me. I tried on lipsticks with one of my other sisters at Sephora once and dealt with five aggressive White women in a span of under 30 minutes. Anytime I am at M•A•C and speaking to a clerk, especially a pretty Black one, a White woman immediately comes up and starts barking at the clerk and since Black people are socialized to prioritize Whites’ needs over our own, most Black clerks (at any store really) stop helping me and tend to the White woman who interrupted.

I’ve been standing in line to check out at various stores and have had White women cut in front of me in line, bump their cart into my feet without apology, do the “oh I didn’t see you” thing as they clearly try to run me over, jump in my conversations with the clerks/cashiers using a voice loud enough to drown out both myself and the clerks/cashiers, interrupt conversations with my BFF over and over and over even when we do not respond to their interruptions, jump in my way to examine any product that I am near and even snatch products out of my hands (literally; and if I slap the shit out of one for doing so, she cries, I go to jail), or offer “advice” on products that I did not ask for with disgusting paternalism that infers that I lack intelligence. (I mean, I’ve been traveling and taking photographs and have had random White women visiting those countries step in front of my camera to start “teaching” me something about the culture of the place. Repulsive.)

And these are not store employees. I am not speaking of “shopping while Black” experiences with racist companies and their employees instructed to profile Black customers, nor am I suggesting that the beauty stores that I named here are racist. These incidents of aggression that I speak of here are from White women who are patrons at these places just like I am. They regularly go out of their way to try to make the space hostile for me as if my existence alone interrupts their shopping experience or is an attack on their appearance, as in the case of the beauty stores. This is ironic considering that I never speak to them, I often wait until they are out of a particular area of a store before going there and I never interrupt their conversations with other White women or with any people. This relentless need of theirs to dominate is a one way street in public.

Very few people in public space can allow Black women to speak, smile, laugh and/or simply enjoy each other’s company. And misogynoir guarantees that Black women are always seen as the aggressors against “delicate” White women who then can continue their aggression in social ways that even White men cannot at times. (A lot of this is ableism that is inherently a part of racism as well; the idea that Black women are inherently physically stronger and neurotypical and can only inflict pain, never experience it.) People accept that White men can be violent even if they are not held accountable for it and even if when it is mass violence, all types of excuses are made for it. However, literally no one accepts that White women can be abusers, especially where Black women are concerned. Even how White women as criminals are framed by the media is about focusing on their “beauty” more than their violence.

Every time I mention these public incidents on Twitter, other Black women chime in mentioning that they experience the same. And it is not far-fetched. This is a country where there was a time where Black people congregating was illegal. Black people speaking to each other perceived as criminal (well, this is still true). Black people making eye contact with Whites perceived as disrespect. A Black person expected to move off of a sidewalk if a White person was walking down it. And while many of these things were de jure in the South, they most certainly were de facto in the North. It’s lazy and easy to pretend that racism is central to only one area and certainly there are incredibly boring and predictable people who want my latitude and longitude now to confine this behavior to an area as some sort of racism quarantine where racist microaggressions don’t exist anywhere but there. These are the same type of lazy thinkers who will suggest that it is a “coincidence” and these women are just “rude” and not reacting to the space my body occupies as a Black woman. Meanwhile Black women from all over experience this constant surveillance, interruption and attempts at domination by White women. In fact, my many years in corporate America were the same with the same invasion of personal space and aggressive interruptions of conversations in the office in ways that if HR was actually ethical, would be considered violations.

Before I go outside each day I take a deep breath. I already know how many microaggressions and street harassment incidents I potentially face and how the thousands of small incidents per year add up to an experience of remarkable violence and assault on my mental health and humanity itself. Just once I would like to be able to occupy public space for an extended period of time without having to deal with how much people hate that I am a Black woman who exists wherever they do.

Related Posts: Black Women Do Not Have To Reject Any Mention Of Beauty To Be Womanist/Feminist, When Some Of The Cis White Women Who Are Abused Online Are Also Abusers, White Women and White Privilege: Telling Them NO