The Melaniin Goddess had 300 followers on Instagram — then suddenly she had 355,000 and counting. Her beautiful skin color, the chief reason for her newfound fame, never changed. What did change for Senegalese model Khoudia Diop, The New Face of Beauty (as her Instagram describes her)? What caused her followers to rise by more than 11,000 percent? A partnership with The Colored Girl, an organization that promotes diversity and prides itself on “beautifully disrupting the status quo” had something to do with it. That and — hopefully — a new worldwide embrace of diversity and less restrictive notions of what constitutes beauty.
“Beautifully” is the certainly the way The Colored Girl does its disrupting all right. But beyond beautiful, The Colored Girl is also notably “fierce, tender, intelligent and worthy.” As one Instagram follower describes Melaniin Goddess, captured in a particularly artistic and contemplative pose below: “Magnifique | Afrique”.
