To be light skinned…
That’s just the dream isn’t it?
The Kenyan dream? The black dream?
Since the days of the Fair & Lovely ads on KTN,
“Makes you fairer” “Enhances your complexion” “Removes dark
spots.”
Which for some people, means their whole face.
To be the colour of a honey roasted cashewnut,
Have all the men do double takes as I swivel on by,
Sashaying my hips left, right and centre.
I’m the dream.
I’m the dream girl.
I’m like a Barbie in it’s box.
You can look but you can’t touch because I said so, that and the shade of my
skin.
We all know the drill,
“Light bitches be like…”
“Dark skinned bitches be like…”
Light skinned girls are beautiful, high maintenance and
classy.
Dark skinned girls are the market vendors, begging you to please please please buy their tomatoes 20! Tomato 20!
Ishirini tu! Tomato!
And we automatically assume that their struggle wouldn’t
have been so hard if only their mommas' had a sweet tooth for the yellow yellow.
It’s funny. We’re a race that divides our self so
much to bicker over something as frivolous as the hue of our skin. Leave alone
the colour, now we’re putting it into Crayola subgroups because we’re Just. That.
Shallow. Like we feel like we desperately need to cling to some system of
hierarchy, so that everyone knows their place. (and yours)
So girls grow up scrubbing themselves raw and hating their
parents for not being a bit more exotic.
They become teenagers, and cake
themselves with powder or foundation that’s 3 shades too light.
Adults. They
can’t afford to spend 50 million on skin lighteners,
I mean, it’s not like the
starving people in Turkana need to eat or anything.
It’s not like people, displaced
since 2008 don’t like the quaint tents they're living in. I
digress, adults.
So they buy their juice from the little boutique known as River
Road in itty bitty tubes and bottles and slather that rich creamy goodness
every night like a washed out musician snorts coke.
“Yaaasss sweet
elixir, make me beautiful. Make me desirable. Make me better! Make me better!!”
And it worked. You go girl! Just hide those knuckles and those elbows and no
one will even be able to tell you zapped your melanin away. I repeat, you go girl.
And she’ll keep maintaining her gorgeous new flesh because
she has 4 dates this weekend. She hasn’t been asked out since form 2, Kamau from the Funkie, he smelled weird. She loves it!
She’ll keep at it until the day the mercury in
that itty bitty tube that zapped the life out of her skin, zaps the life out of
her kidneys or liver or heart and that will be the day she stops.
So how long? No really,
how long? Lemme know, a year? Two dozen decades or so before people realize that you don’t need to
change the cloth you were born in in order to really feel beautiful…like the
white girls on the cover of magazines.
“Don’t be silly, I know I’ll never be
white.”
“But it’s close enough, innit?”
And because of this, beautiful babies
grow up thinking everything that grows out of their beautiful skin is a curse,
so they relax and they weave and relax to cover that thick ugly mess of kinks …like
the girls on the magazines. And they burn the gift passed down to them since
the beginning of time because unfortunately, in this case, it’s not the thought
that counts.
We need to teach girls to love themselves, inside and outside, whether they’re the colour of a creamy latte or sweet black tea. And if
this is so hard for you, if you can’t find the strength to love yourself as the
you you know, then sure…go ahead, change it. I’d be lying if I said we won’t
judge. I mean, @MissVeeBeiby has only a thousand or so tweets and articles
written about her everyday. But goddammit woman, just love yourself and be
happy dammit! Be happy.
Be happy.
