Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder, beauty comes in all shapes, colors and sizes. The globe consists of more than 7 billion people, with rich diverse cultures who have different descriptive views on what is beautiful. One can never truly define beauty out of an individual sphere, every person is entitled to their own definition of beauty.
— Rena Stephanus
One of the greatest benefits of living in Namibia is that you are exposed to different social formations, they come with their own insights of what is considered to be beautiful in their respective ethnical tribes. Namibia’s history is deeply rooted in colonialism, which also plays a role in the ethnical tribes’ description of beauty.
For long Namibian people have used or adopted methods which helped them maintain what they perceive as beautiful or help them enhance their beauty. Hair, attire and skin; these are of the many components that people look up to define beauty.
Attire
Most Namibian tribes have adopted Western cultures and fused them to their own style, like the renowned Herero dress “ohorokova yo Tjikaiva”. This dress was adopted from the Victorian tradition with the Herero people adding the head piece, which is inspired by the horns of a cow. Over the years this dress has gone through gradual changes.
Hair
You are your hair and your hair is you. Your hair (short hair, long hair, weave, natural hair you name it) defines your character before you could even decide to narrate it to someone you just met. The hair industry being one of the fastest growing industries has seen more people investing in this trade over the couple of years. Namibian people take pride in their hair, and this is something that has been passed on from generation to generations like the use of the Ximena fruit Oil (Ombeke) by the Aawambo and that of butter and ochre (Otjize) by the Ovahimba people.
Skin
Skin is one of the greatest measurements of beauty in today’s era, white skin, dark skin, light skin. Measuring beauty based on the degree of the pigment of your skin has been a technique used by many and still continues to be used by many people in the beauty Industry.
Beauty under the Namibian context is broad and is not only associated to a single representation of what is perceived to be “beautiful”, for the reason that there are several diverse cultures within the country who have their own description of beauty.
