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Acceptance…

Growing up, I wanted to be any shade lighter than the shade I am. I didn’t consider it self hate, at least not at that time, but I knew I was insecure about the way I looked. Although it wasn’t often, I experienced occasional bullying. I loathed having my picture taken and it wasn’t until recently that I became comfortable with the idea of being in front of a camera.

My family and most of my friends were shades lighter than me, which made me feel way out of place. Being raised in a predominantly black population, one would assume that I would be comfortable in the skin that I was given at birth. If only that were the case. I wanted to be more desirable, become more ‘beautiful’ because the way I looked wasn’t something that was sought after. I became accustomed to comments like “you’re so black” or “you look like the bottom of a pot” and other statements similar to those. I started to believe that I was less than, and therefore went on to accept I would always be inferior. 

For a long time, how I looked affected how I felt about myself, and that kept me away from living like the way I wanted. I wish someone had come along sooner to educate me to love myself for who I AM. It wasn’t until a couple of years ago when I was finally exposed to people that looked like me in mainstream media, that I began to see how people with the same shade as mine and even darker were happy being in their own skin.

Let’s celebrate dark skin, stop looking for validation in all the wrong people and fall in love with we are.

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