I have spent a lot of time and money going to therapy and trying different ways to trick my mind into believing that I am beautiful. I hide my insecurities behind Snapchat filters.
People will tell you, and they will start sounding like broken records -- beauty comes from the inside, beauty comes from the inside, beauty comes from the inside. So it is not a surprise when you cut yourself open hoping to see the beauty that lies underneath the brown skin. The brown skin that seems inferior to white skin, no matter how many times I see it being sold in bottles of self-tanner and tanning beds. The brown skin that is only ever admired when it has been coated or burned onto the white skin.
My skin has only ever been beautiful when it benefits a white person's ‘beauty.’ Only when it makes them glow and when it makes them look like they spent a summer on the beaches of Mexico among the natives that they spend millions of dollars trying to keep out of their white United States.
For the little brown girl or boy who is told to stay in the shade so you won't get darker -- this is for you. When the boy doesn’t text or call back because he only likes white girls -- this is for you. When they comment on your white peer's summer tan and say it beautiful after they have just hurled insults at your always present tan -- this is for you. This is for you because you are beautiful.
You are beautiful and you will be beautiful tomorrow. They will hurl words at you like knives hoping to penetrate your skin and when they do remind yourself that your skin is a testament to your strength. This skin is armor; the same armor our ancestors wore.
Your skin is prove of greatness how it will not blend into the dirt no matter how much they try to beat you into the ground. This skin will continue to grow over generations, and no one can beat the brownness out of it. This skin is prove of what the sun can do; it will toughen you up. Give you a thick skin so when they hurl insults your way you are prepared.
You are beautiful. This skin you have been given is beautiful. The features you have been given are beautiful. And although everyone will try to eliminate the presence of brown skin remind them of how it has always gotten up and kept going, and going, and going, and going.
When they tell you brown skin girls are not beautiful you tell them that you could give Helen of Troy a run for her money. Aphrodite would kneel in front of you. There is nothing more beautiful in this world than someone who refuses to give up. This skin that refuses to hide away. They will sell you whitening products, but your skin is a medley of all the ones before you. The ones that bore this skin and have died so that you could live. You are beautiful
People will try to diminish your beauty and it is on those days that you should know that you are beautiful. And if at the end of the day you don’t want to be beautiful that is okay. There is worth in more than just beauty. You are more than just beautiful; you are many other things and beauty is just the foundation of the greatness that you are.
