Notes from A Dark Skinned Girl

When I was younger, I was always comfortable in my own skin. As a child, I was happy and carefree; not concerned with matters of beauty and the like. I never looked at my mum and wondered why she was of a lighter skin tone than me. I never looked at her hair and wondered why it was a different color from mine. No. I was above such trivial things.

I preferred to content myself with crazy experiments I conducted in my grandparents's garage. I would empty old teabags into an old honey jar and add in all numbers of eclectic ingredients; lemon tree leaves; freshly-squeezed lemon juice; mud and leftovers. I remember the triumphant look I wore on my face when I stole a glossy brown egg from the pantry and added it to my mixture; then the ashen look I wore as I bowed my head under the heat of a heavy scolding. 

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When I moved to Botswana to be with my mum, I had to start a new school. I had no friends and had just entered my adolescence. Everything was foreign to me. I had never seen a guy, save for my best friend's brother, and wasn't prepared for the onslaught of emotions that struck me when I first saw him. The frantic increase in heartbeats; the sweat dripping out of my pours and the obvious stutter in my words as I spoke to him; the widening of my eyes and the dilation of my pupils as I gazed upon him. All that crap. (/_\)

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And yet I felt inferior. It grew worse when I came to high school and it is still there; hanging over my head like a dark cloud of depression. I noticed it everywhere. Every guy wanted either a white girl or a yellow bone. All the guys I liked at least. That's how I grew to hate my skin tone even more. I know that people always say that black is beautiful and everything and that I should be thankful for my skin tone. I haven't woken up once in my teenage years and said, "Holy sh** I'm beautiful!" 

I haven't. Yet.

I'm still a teenager. There may still be time. Perhaps one day I will wake up and realize my full beauty and feel comfortable in my own skin for once in my life. But for now, I will remain in the dark, contemplating how much better people would treat me if I were lighter skinned.

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Sadly that is a very prevalent factor in my region of Africa; the whole of Africa in fact. Lighter skinned people are seen as superior and more attractive. That's why women aspire to appear more white in order to attract mates. They cake their skin with poisons that claim to lighten their skin but end up causing irreparable damage to themselves. I would never do that to myself: no matter how much I hate my skin tone.

Maybe. Someday.