I am always taken aback by how light skinned black people are viewed by their communities, especially women. Let me start by acknowledging how we need to end colorism in our communities and start embracing our uniqueness. Let’s get to know each other beyond the shade of our complexions.
Many have this idea that beauty comes as a form of your skin tone, we have seen how fashion magazines airbrush cover girls, how makeup artists have to make people appear lighter than they really are and the flaw of thinking that being light skinned is a measure of beauty. We have seen how public figures have opted to bleach their skins, or how they are getting more lighter as the years go by. Not overlooking the fact that most skin care products have an ingredient that somehow brightens your skin tone, how we have standardized being light skinned as beautiful.
I am pro choice, I believe it should be an individual choice if one is going to be lightening their skin, my concern is when this attitude is affecting children, when we start making dark skinned children feel inferior to light skinned ones, ever wondered what that does to their self esteem? How we make children beautify being like a barbie doll? How we buy black children white looking dolls? How we make it difficult for dark skinned women to know they are beautiful.
Now, let’s step into our colorism man mindset, we see some people glorifying being light skinned that they go to extreme measures of bleaching their children’s skins, we see people buying harmful chemicals in the hope of being light skinned and to be viewed as beautiful, why can’t we embrace our uniqueness without making others feel less beautiful? I have seen how some light skinned, myself included, to being treated differently as compared to someone who is tones darker than I am.
I really don’t understand why we have normalized this bad trend. I personally feel uncomfortable when I come across women who are darker than me talking about beauty because we are viewed that we shouldn’t have an opinion since we already light skinned, I fail to understand why we are also viewed as less African. Do I really have to be dark skinned to be viewed as “African”, I recall the Face of Africa, did we ever had a winner who was light skinned?
People think is all glory for light skinned women but it’s really not, many times its believed that you got a job offer only because you light skinned, to many we cannot be brainy or engage in intellectual conversations because we are seen as just empty heads, everyone thinks we have it all figured out because we seen as beautiful, not true! At times we want to be credited because we got those jobs in merit and it has nothing to do with being light skinned, but it’s never the case.
Recently, I have seen how almost everyone is getting a shade lighter, especially in the entertainment industry, and this is worrisome because we have young ones looking at these people as role models. Another topic for another day, why I am against children having celebrities as role models, yes I don’t believe in role models. I don’t believe in choosing a public figure to look up to. There I said it, I don’t believe in looking from outside for inspiration. I am my own inspiration. Ouch!
Back to skin tones, why are we even causing divisions when we are all black? Are we that messed up that we will always equate being light skinned as beautiful and dark skinned, not? Ohhh did I mention how light skinned women shouldn’t be smart according to society standards? How they are beauty with no brains? Who always get their way in life? And how dark skinned women work hard? I really don’t get colorism and it needs to fall.
I am for everyone having to work on their self esteem without media standards, with saying you have to look this way in order to be viewed as beautiful or intelligent. You are beautiful as you are, #colorismmustfall.
Embrace your beauty and intelligence,
Love always,
Molemole ❤
MolemoleSeima 