Black is Beautiful ft The Year I Turned Pretty

"What happens to a black girl who is too anxious to feel like magic?"- Anonymous

Most members of my maternal family relations are light-skinned in complexion which made me always see myself as the same. I would always talk about how light-skinned I was until a while later my mum told me in a kind of passive-aggressive way that I wasn’t light-skinned, she used the word “fair.” For a while, her words hurt, made me feel insecure like I didn’t fit in, that I wasn’t pretty enough because I was not light-skinned.

Fast forward into the future, I can’t really remember what year this was, but it was the year the media especially, was encouraging brown and black-skinned girls to love and embrace their skin tone, you would hear phrases or slang such as “melanin popping” and the likes. I was just finished with junior secondary school and was surrounded by lots of girls who would use products such as "Caro White" or "Miss White" which were all whitening lotions and most times had the pictures of pretty white girls on them but were said to be made in Nigeria. There were others too who were in love with their skin, the ones who would lather their skin with shea butter or coconut oil so as to make their brown skin shine all the more. It was their confidence and the way embraced their bodies that made to not only admire them but to also look in the mirror and no longer wish I was as light-skinned as my mum, I began to embrace my complexion, I no longer looked for products that lighten my skin tone but enhance it. It's funny how issues such as racism are very serious in many parts of the world whereas a lot of people right here in this country suffer from colourism.

"Little black girls have no language to share how much we might admire each other. Rather we are conditioned to sift through our skin tones, compare, separate and pluck out each other....."- Michaela Angela Davies.