Disclaimer:

This topic is really dear to my heart because I have lived it and I keep living it.

I have absolutely nothing against people having preferences and standards because even I have those.

So, here goes, I constantly follow a particular Wattpad writer’s fanfiction of one of my favorite shows (Star on Fox) and yesterday’s update addressed color. I am Ghanaian by the way and I was born and raised in Ghana. You’d think being in Africa colorism won’t be an issue but it really is. That is why you see beautiful black girls bleaching their skin and ending up looking like scarecrows.

As a young child, I always thought I was beautiful until I became a teenager and I learnt about colorism. I got comments such as;

• You’re pretty for a black girl
• You’re not too black and that is nice
• If you were lighter like your mom, you’d be so beautiful

You get the picture I’m trying to paint. So, I was really self-conscious because I thought my skin color disqualified me and it took away from my beauty. My mom is lighter than I am. I take after my dad, you see. One of the many things I love about my mom is she always said I was beautiful but when so many people were telling me otherwise, I really thought she was just saying that because she was my mom and she was supposed to tell me nice things. I doubted her words and I resented myself and God for a long time because I was dark. I remember praying and asking God why He didn’t let me be lighter like my mom and my sister.

Imagine being 13 and having a crush on the lightest boy in the class. Yep, that was me. (Whew, I digress)

Anyway, for the longest time, I really thought I wasn’t good enough so I made a lot of bad decisions to get people especially boys to like me. You see, I wasn’t just dark-skinned, I was thick too and we know how hard it is for thick girls sometimes.  It has taken me quite a number of years for me to like myself and love myself but I have finally reached a point in my life where I truly appreciate who I am and what I look like.

Please note that this post was written before All That And A Bag Of Chips and they are essentially talking about the same thing.

Thank you for reading!

P.S: I am honestly just posting old posts that have been sitting in my drafts.