This blog was created to bring awareness to issues we have within the African American race. The goal is to promote equality and acceptance amongst ourselves. The topic of skin shade and color seems to always be prevalent with no signs of letting down. It's time to stand up and come together as one. A beautiful race.
Feel free to use this as a platform to tell your story and ways we can positively impact those to come after us...
xoxo,
Elizabeth Toyin
Growing up in a Nigerian household, conversations regarding the topic of skin color as it relates to beauty was a never-ending one. My lighter skinned cousins were clearly more favored than the darker ones. I can't even count how many aunties I had that used bleaching cream to lighten their skin. During high school was when I realized this issue was one African-Americans also dealt with. Guys would quickly flock to the light skinned girls even if they were not as beautiful as other darker skinned girls. The funniest thing to me though was when I tried to explain this phenomena to a white friend of mine, he looked at me blank faced because to him we were all just black. Although the media in the past definitely perpetuated issues such as these, it was sad that we as Africans and African Americans allowed it to continue to divide us. I use the past tense because I don't actually think it is as bad as it was before. Nowadays when I turn on the TV I see commercials with equal amounts of dark skinned and light skinned women. They are all just natural now, which is the "new" thing. With prominent figures such as Michelle Obama, I think black women as a whole are learning to embrace everything about themselves and hopefully realizing that skin color plays such a small role in the larger picture of who they are as a person.
ReplyDeleteYes, I worry most about it dividing our race. It does seem to be changing for the better in the eyes of the media. Nowadays we see more darker complexion women just as much as we see lighter complexion women giving a good representation of the beauty within our black race.
DeleteThanks for your response and sharing a bit of your experience :)
xoxo