Hello!

 Judging by the topic, I’ll assume you know what this is about,

being a dark skinned girl.

I’m actually obsessed with my skin colour. But for some reason some people aren’t. Well, I don’t understand what your problem is sir, are you mad at this gold highlight on my cheeks?

Growing up my mum always complained about her skin colour(she’s #teamlightskin lol). She used to complain about her arms being too light, and that she would give anything to be dark. So when I went to school and kids and sometimes teachers made up jokes about how dark I was, I laughed with them because in my head I knew deep down they were envious of my colour and wanted to be me, I was very humble about it, lol! I now know that wasn’t necessarily the case but that’s what I got from it at the time, and that shielded me from a lot of self hate that young dark skin girls go through growing up. Thinking of it, maybe my mum didn’t really want to be dark, she just used some reverse psychology shit on me and It worked.

Fast forward to today,

I’ve had my fair share of experiences and I thought I’d share.

In my first year of campus I went through a phase, I wanted to become a model. I mostly did it because I apparently had the ‘model features’ or so I was told. Wanting to exploit this talent everyone saw, I went and signed up with an agency and my modelling career sky rocketed… kidding! Nothing really came out of it. Until I was given a call to go for a rehearsal catwalk. I was over it by then, but I had nothing to lose so I gave it a chance. The minute I walked into the room I could feel the negative energy directed at me. But you know me! I ooze good vibes, so I made light of the situation. There were several girls there so we did our thing and when class was over, the coach called me aside and went ahead and asked me how tall I was. I wasn’t sure so he measured me and I turned out to be 5’6. He started explaining to me how I can’t be on the lineup because he needs his girls to meet certain standards, his exact words were ‘you’re short and chunky’. I mean… I’m no Naomi Campbell but dude! Half of the girls in that room were shorter than me and I’m pretty certain I’m the farthest from being labelled chunky, right?

But I guess everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

It dawned on me later, that he just didn’t want me on his lineup because of my cocoa colour, given that all the other girls were all lighter and none of them got cut. That was just… cold.

In campus (university) I experimented quite a bit with my look, I dyed my hair purple, at some point I had bangs, I wore crazy ridiculous clothes, I went goth for a while and no one ever questioned me. (I admit, I still wonder what was going through my head in some of those moments). But the one day I decided to wear red lipstick to school, is the day some random girl in school just decides to stop me and tell me that it doesn’t look good on my skin. Here’s the thing, I know nobody looks good in everything but I’m the one person that does, Kapish?!

And for the rest of that school year I wore red lipstick, just because.

I’m pretty certain that if you are a dark skinned girl, you’ve gotten that ‘you’re pretty for a dark skin‘ nonsense. I assume that all guys mean well by this but that is the most half ass ‘compliment‘ ever used. The first time a guy used this line on me I felt like a thousand swords impaled my heart, mostly because I actually liked him. Not anymore. Dude! We had a good thing going and you just had to ruin everything. Please come correct.

But on a serious note, the little fragments of oppression people face based on their looks, shape or colour is ridiculous. Everyone wants to feel special and nobody likes to be judged. It’s simple, make everyone feel special and don’t judge people.

I’ll have to end it here because if I go on this might turn into a book. Ha!

Until next time!

(If you enjoyed this read you will also love shelikestoramble.wordpress.com by my bestie Wilo_chan)

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOB GITHAKA

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Jumpsuit- LC Waikiki (Two-Rivers mall)