‘You’re pretty for a dark-skin girl’

Abike, Vice President

My self-worth, my beauty even, as a black girl has always been subject to debate in society. Not only did I grow up in a white-majority country, but I also was raised in a white-concentrated area of London. This meant two things for me: the first being that I was always constantly aware about how different I looked to many of my friends. Where they had long, silky, blonde hair, I had a 4c frizzy lion’s mane. Where they had slim noses and smaller lips, my button nose and fuller lips engulfed my face. And where their skin was light and pale, my own was dark. Just dark. Too dark. The second thing I discovered was that this always made me feel like the literal black sheep, the odd-one-out, amongst my peers. However, the deep Eurocentric preference, obsession even, prevalent within our Western society began to damage my childhood innocent love for my blackness. Since the media always perpetuated the idolisation of ‘whiteness’, I was always struggling to reach the perfection bar of beauty. Nearly every TV show I watched as a young girl had a white protagonist. Hannah Montana. Lizzie McGuire. Even Stevens. Need I go on? And whilst as I child I never thought too deeply about the lack of representation of dark-skin black girls, why all Barbies were white or why the black characters where always delegated to secondary, stereotyped roles, the need to aspire to ‘whiteness’ unconsciously settled within me. And it began to damage me even if I was unaware of it at the time. At age six, I remember dreaming a very vivid dream. I was walking down my street: young, free and uninhibited. Completely at peace. I remember feeling happy, unusually elated even. Why? Because as I looked down at my hands, I saw ten ‘perfect’ ivory fingers. As I reached for my curly hair, silky new ginger curls entwined my fingers . Later, I got home and looked in the mirror. Gone was my ‘ugly’ broad nose, replaced by a slimmer doll-like copy. My ‘boring’ brown eyes now glistened emerald. What about my ‘fat’ lips that I had been ridiculed for possessing? Those lips were gone. Gone forever. Replaced by ‘perfect’ small pink substitutions. And although only a dream, when my six-year-old self awoke the next morning, that same happiness persisted. Because in my dream I was now ‘beautifully’ white. I use the the quotation marks in the above paragraph deliberately, mind you. Whilst I didn’t want to actually BE white, like many other young black children, I was always acutely aware of the undesireability of who I was as a young black girl in the West. My parents had always taught me the importance of self -love of your own heritage and race, but Western society chewed that up and spat it out. So as opposed to the development of black self-love or the recognition of beauty in melanin, the Eurocentric obsession mutated like a weed that would never be eradicated. Although ‘whiteness’ was the impossible goal, the perception that that “the ‘whiter’ or lighter you were, the more beautiful you were” persisted. The idea that in order for a black person to be beautiful, their traditionally black features had to be diminished and their melanin skin had to be lighter developed. Colourism had reared its ugly head in society – the mutant sibling of the Eurocentric perfection bar. And since colourism affords preferential treatment/perceptions to those with a lighter, ‘more desirable’ complexion, we can be forgiven for naively believing that it is only perpetuated by Western idolisation of the white man. We can be forgiven for assuming that it is only presented by predominately white societies encouraging discriminatory prejudicial attitudes and treatment to those with darker complexions. Yet whilst this is the case, it is only half of the story. Most disappointingly of all, colourism also exists within our own communities. Recently, I attended a barbeque and experienced it first-hand. With it being summer, my skin had become noticeably darker than usual. Yet whilst my self-love of my complexion had definitely increased with age, nothing could have prepared me for what I was to experience. Whilst the thought of becoming darker actually excited me, I crucially forgot that with dark skin comes even darker responses: ‘You’re so dark, ahn ahn!’ ‘You’ve been spending TOO much time out in the sun!’. ‘I mean I’m not saying you’re not pretty, but you’re too dark!’. ‘Blackie.’ ‘N*gger!’. You could be forgiven for thinking that I had experienced such hate, such disgust, from a white person. Or an Asian person. Or anyone who wasn’t black. But the truly laughable thing about the whole experience is that the speaker was black, even if only slightly lighter than me. Her comments cut me deep, but her mentality wounded me further. Her apparent disgust at my darker appearance apparently ‘ruining’ my beauty left me both dumbfounded and hurt. I truly realised then that my skin could be considered ugly amongst my own race. But can you blame her? I mean, can you truly blame her? The woman who insulted me was born and raised in Nigeria, a country still reeling from the physical, mental and financial exploitation of colonisation. Those same colonisers taught the Nigerian people that they were inherently, both mentally and culturally, inferior to their white counterparts. They fed the people lies about the primitivity of their culture. According to them, ‘African savages’ were in desperate need of white saving. So, can you blame her for developing this self-hating attitude? Can you blame her for believing ‘light’ is the beauty aspiration, in a country that only recently disentangled itself from the social and cultural crushing grip of white supremacy? And whilst many Nigerians do not subscribe to this mentality, the colourism issue has still managed to infiltrate the deepest corners of many African and Asian communities. And it is unsurprising. I mean, teach enough people that a lie is the truth for long enough and eventually they’re bound to believe it. If anything, the popularity of skin whitening/bleaching campaigns in these communities should be evidence enough of the damaging social implications of past colonisation. But it is only truly contextualised and the severity of the issue understood when you, a black woman, experience the shock of being called the n-word by your own people. But you shouldn’t accept it. You shouldn’t accept being called a n*gger or being told to lighten your skin to increase your beauty. Like I did. You shouldn’t accept half hearted ‘compliments’ about the fact that your afro looks interesting’. Like I did. You shouldn’t have to accept your black features so late in life, like I did, just because society has only recently decided to admire them. In fact, you shouldn’t have to accept anything that reduces the value of the darkness of your skin or the blackness of your features in order to fit into society. Because even though I did, and even though I have just recently learned to value myself, the years that I spent hating myself fill me with regret daily. I guess, looking back, I became very passive. Since I had already accepted that my blackness wasn’t viewed as beautiful, it became very easy to accept any fickle ‘compliment’ that people threw my way: ‘You’re pretty for a dark-skin/black woman’. This was something that I and my dark-skin friends heard frequently. You see because it always started as a potential compliment, I allowed myself to feel good about who I was. I would look at the individual who said ‘you’re pretty…’ and was so close to saying thank you. So close to hugging them. So close to actually start believing that I was pretty, maybe even beautiful. But in that second that I allowed myself to receive the compliment, and in that second that I started to believe that maybe the tide was turning and the world was beginning to appreciate my dark skin in all its glory, ‘…for a dark-skin girl’ followed. And my mood would inevitably shift. I never felt surprised – I was used to it by then. But it didn’t stop the anger. Nor the disappointment. And it certainly didn’t stop the pain. However, one should never confuse my past passivity with complacency. You see, I never spoke back because I couldn’t. If I challenged the majority, I was always met with, ‘you’re being so sensitive’. So, I silenced my voice – I allowed white society to paint me with ‘assimilation’ until the only part of love for my blackness that remained was my pride in our historical struggle. Don’t get it twisted – I never hated being black, society had only taught me to hate the blackness of my features. It taught me to desire lighter skin, and less kinky hair. And I fell straight into the trap, reeled in by the tempting lies of the ‘beauty in whiteness’ like a fish on a hook. But here’s where the story changed for good: I remember being one of the few token black girls in school and the conversation I was having with friends inevitably flowed to race. For whatever reason, a debate arose as to whether or not I was darkskin. For me the answer was simple: I wasn’t lightskin but I wasn’t darkskin either. I mean my skin was dark, but not that dark. Why was this even a debate? Couldn’t they simply see that I was the perfect medium blend brand of black assimilation? Dark enough to be considered black, but not black enough to be seen as ghetto? Why were we even discussing this? ‘You’re dark chocolate for sure.’ Excuse me? She said what? But a homogeneity of voices raised in agreement. To my friends my skin was ‘dark chocolate’, and that settled it. Yet although there was no offence in the words of my white or Asian friends in describing me as such, I wondered why the phrase hurt me so much anyway. Why did the word ‘dark’ sting me so viciously? After school, I looked in the mirror. I stared long and hard at my reflection. Long enough for me to see who exactly I was. And when it finally clicked, when it finally dawned on me, it was as though the brightest light had gone off in my head. I was dark. Extremely so. How had I never seen this before? The same skin that I had left the house in that morning believing to be lighter was the same skin that was staring me right back in the face as dark as midnight. And gag is it wasn’t ugly, it was beautiful. So, I kinda just stared and let it settle. I allowed my self to accept what society denied me the right to be for all those years – a normal dark skin girl. I end on this blog on a high note. I can finally say confidently that I love myself as a young, dark-skin woman. If you could understand the pride I feel as I type these words: Indescribable. Yes, it may seem trivial to some of you, maybe even insignificant to others. But to me, my heart swells up with happiness every time I consider both the blackness of my features and the darkness of my skin. Because I battled with white society for years about my skin – but I finally came out on top. And while, it took almost 18 years for me to love myself wholly, I do not wish those years of struggle on any of you. So, if anything is to come of this post, and if any lessons are to be learnt, be it simply that you find that mirror. I want you to hold that mirror and stare into it deeply. And whatever you see, whatever you find, love it unconditionally. Be it that skin, that hair, those lips or that nose – my only request is that you internalise that beauty wholeheartedly. Society lied to me for years. I can only hope that it doesn’t do the same to you.Stay blessed and stay woke, Stay blessed y’all,

(Check out my personal blog on wordpress here – https://wordpress.com/post/simplyabike.wordpress.com/43)