Tales From The Mecca: Coming To Terms With My Dark Skin - The Hilltop - NewsThe club flashed red and blue lights on the dance floor at Club Next, one of the hottest clubs in DC. We were among hundreds partying and sweating to the DJ's mixes. The host for the night started to hype the crowd, calling out neighborhoods.
"Is Acres Home in the building? What about Cypress?" he asked. "I know 5th Ward is live. We scream when he called out North side of Houston. This night was just too fun. "There are some beautiful ladies in here tonight," he said. The crowd screamed again with excitement. We just know he is talking to us.
"Yea, that's right, I'm talking to the light skinned girls! Team light-skin lets go!"
All my friends, except for the lightest one Brittney, were silent. We waited for our shout out, "dark-skinned girls in the house?" None came.
My friends and I prayed for team dark skinned. None, at least not for this evening.
Unlike Brittney, I come from a family where mostly everyone is greater than or equal to my dark complexion. Lil Wayne would not find a "long-haired thick redbone" anywhere at my family reunion. I'm sure my family and millions of darker skinned women, could imagine my shock and slight hurt at the club that night. I wondered how they did it for decades when I could barely handle less than 20 years.
Up until 9, I had a caramel complexion. I got it from my grandmother. My mother used to say, "I prayed you wouldn't come out so black." Now I didn't think much of it until I went to Disney World and stayed in the sun without sunscreen too long. My mother nearly keeled over at the sight of her overly chocolate child.
Ever since that fateful trip I have forever been dark. I was already a nerd at school. My white classmates would joke on how they could only see my teeth and the whites of my eyes at night. My favorite had to be when we colored pictures. They would pick the blackest of black markers to draw me. By 5th grade, I had enough of the ridicule. I had to fix it.
Every night I would scrub my face till my skin was raw and sore. Then I'd take of my mother's skin bleaching cream and rub it all over my arms, face, and legs. It burned because of the scrubbing. After all, pain is beauty.
I was determined never to hear the words "you're cute for a dark skinned girl" again. In the morning I'd apply two types of sunscreen. They had two different SPF levels. One had SPF 30 and the other SPF 50. I figured SPF 80 applied twice a day would block any chance of the sun making me darker.
At first I was excited to go back to my lighter hue. Finally, I was going to be accepted. I would just have to be extremely greasy for a couple of months to get to where I wanted. I would leave for school shining like a freshly basted turkey.
I eventually grew tired of sneaking using my mother's night cream and applying all these products on every day. It wasn't even working anyway. They lie on the boxes and the bottles. Truthfully, once you go black you never go back.
Days in the summer would drag on. I refused to go outside in the daytime. I was starting to get bored with myself. I decided to accompany my aunt on a trip to her dermatologist. I put on a wide brim sun hat, SPF 70 sunscreen, and sunglasses to walk to the car with tinted windows parked two feet away in my driveway.
I was growing out of hand with this skin pigment thing. No one stopped me. So I kept on with my ridiculous antics. Once at the dermatologist, I began to read their handouts on bleaching your skin. I started thinking about how that would make such a fantastic Christmas gift. Most kids my age would ask for a dirt bike or a CD. I was going to ask for a chemical peel.
Looking at magazines in the waiting room just proved how America favored light skinned individuals over darker ones. Every celebrity, whether it was Gabrielle Union, Beyonce, or even Oprah, looked lighter than they did on TV. That was the only way they could get sales up and be accepted. I just knew I had to do the same.
Maybe I was asking a little too much for a chemical peel. Let's face it I had no insurance and a chemical peel would cost most of my year's allowance. I put that dream aside and continued my sun avoidance techniques.
Until sophomore year in college I bought every new "even toning" cream and or wash. Still none of them really worked. My bathroom cabinet was absolutely ridiculous. I was what they called a product junkie. Bleaching cream, toners, and even tone masks polluted my space. It looked like part of the beauty section of Target with dozens of bottles and jars. White, brown, green, red, blue containers all with the same promise of lighter even skin just sat there taking up space.
I thought to myself, "does it really matter how dark or light I am?"
As a college student in undergrad, I have been surrounded by the more mature and educated crowd in terms of beauty. I had not heard "cute for a dark skinned girl" and it felt amazing. I threw out my miniature beauty store.
I looked in the mirror and realized I have to love myself and be happy with how I look no matter how dark I am. I don't think I would even change my skin tone if I had the chance.
Black is beautiful no matter the shade.
That's deep.
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