Maya Boyd Is Dark Enough to Play Storm. There, I said it.

Maya Boyd has officially been cast as Storm in Marvel's upcoming X-Men movie. And somehow, we're already talking about skin tones again. At first, I couldn't help but think: here we go again. We're debating who's dark-skinned, who's brown-skinned, who's “Black enough,” and whether Maya Boyd is dark enough to play Storm. But the more I listened to the conversation, the more I realized that maybe there's something deeper underneath all of this. Because yes, sometimes it feels exhausting to constantly debate Black women's complexions. But colorism is still very real, and the frustration behind these conversations didn't come from nowhere. So where does that leave us? Can we acknowledge the history of colorism and the desire for darker-skinned representation without turning every difference in complexion into a question of whether someone is “Black enough”? And why, when we talk about the beauty of Black women, do we so often end up talking about Eurocentric features? I have some thoughts. #MayaBoyd #Storm #XMen #Colorism #BlackWomen