Dark Chocolate, Creme Souffles and Other Euphemisms.

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.