The origins of the African model in the west are tied to the emergence of the first products tailored to the particular needs of African–American women in the late nineteenth century. In her book Skin Deep: Inside the World of Black Fashion Models, Barbara Summers identifies entrepreneur Madame C. J. Walker, whose beauty products gave women of African descent in the US a natural sense of pride in their appearance, entertainer Josephine Baker and actress Lena Horne. This, along with the Black Power movement in the 1960s, helped with the African identity as far as the US was concerned, leading to a more global sense of ‘black is beautiful’.
   In the west, this finally provided more natural acceptance of the natural beauty of African women, even if it had been a global pinnacle centuries before when Ethiopia was one of the most advanced economies in the world. Black beauty had come full circle.

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