African Girls

Ancient African Tribes

Picture of a beautiful African girl from the Mursi tribe with a lip plate that in her ancient African tribe is thought to enhance beauty. African girls from many native African tribes enhance their natural beauty with lip plates, scarification, tattoos, and female body painting.  Due to the dark color of the skin of many African girls, tattoos are not as discernable as they are on lighter skinned people.  This may explain the prevalence of scarification as a means of body decoration among African girls.  Moreover, some African tribes believe that making scars on newborn babies prevents blindness and poor vision.  Being darker skinned, African girls often develop raised keloid scars, which give a three-dimensional effect.  Modesty has a much different cultural interpretation by many African girls.  In fact for some African tribes, body painting is regarded as body "coverage" much as clothes are.