Every dark-skinned woman has played the Which-One-Are-You-In-This-Photo game where nine out of ten times you end up pointing at a white spot...
Every dark-skinned woman has played the Which-One-Are-You-In-This-Photo game where nine out of ten times you end up pointing at a white spot because the only part of you that's visible is your perfectly white teeth. You've put up with people calling you names like mnyamane and when people say you're pretty it's qualified with, "...for a dark skinned girl."
I don’t know when I started hating light-skinned women, but the seed was planted many years ago. Growing up we were all taught that you need to stay out of the sun if you want a beautiful complexion. You know, because ‘beautiful’ means ‘not dark’. We grew up watching our mothers use poisonous creams to lighten their skins and hearing things like, "Ah, she got her complexion from her dad - such an ugly dark baby!"
As we get older we learn that being light-skinned has become a social currency. Your guy friends ask you to hook them up with your yellow bone bestie. In the economy of black beauty, the light skinned ones are the goddesses – men flock to their temples to worship. What we see in movies often plays out in real life - regular darks skinned women sit at the feet of the light skinned one, playing the role of the dark skinned BFF.
So there I am standing in a perfectly lit bathroom with my light-skinned friend Buhle. Her name tells you everything you need to know. She looked perfect in front of that mirror, powdering her face and then nervously smoothing down her perfect dress, resisting the urge to chew on her perfect fingernails. I looked at her with a mixture of awe, admiration and envy. Yes, envy.
I couldn't deny it.
My envy was triggered by situations like a night at the pub when that guy’s girlfriend wouldn’t stop gushing about how pretty she looked, like I was invisible. My envy reared its ugly head when men risked whiplash just to get a second and third look at her. My envy made me think it was unfair that a human can have such perfect skin, with a perfect complexion, overlaying perfect cheekbones.
So there I was staring at this goddess in front of me and realising that this envy thing was big and ugly and very much alive on the inside of me. Because Buhle is beautiful. And in her space I didn’t feel like I could be beautiful. No mirror, no well-lit the bathroom, no world had room for my kind of beauty when she was around.
If you’re dark-skinned and honest, you’ve probably felt the same way. You’ve hated going out with your friend to watch her hog everyone’s attention. You’ve struggled with loving her to bits but hating her at the same time. You’ve tried to make up for what you lack in looks by having a larger than life personality. You've often said to yourself and other, "I am dark, BUT beautiful." Why the ‘but’?
The truth behind many people's resentment towards light-skinned black women is this: People worship the idol of beauty that demands adherence to a false standard of beauty (and worth). On the surface this results in women bleaching their skin and getting silicone implants. The deeper consequence is an inability to love yourself and to love others.
I hate light-skinned women because I perceive them as having attained a status, reached a level, met a standard of beauty that I could never meet. I feel like when I’ll always be at the bottom of the ‘bae chain’ no matter how hard I try. She doesn’t have to try, she 'woke up like this'. The ugly truth is that my friend isn't the problem, she cannot help the way that she looks, my perception is the issue.
There are two kinds of women reading this: women the world considers ‘beautiful’ and the rest of us who are just regular human beings.
‘Beautiful’ women are like my light-skinned friend in the bathroom. You don't put filters on your Instagram selfies because you look perfect anyway. You look perfect without makeup, even after an all-nighter where you didn’t get a wink of sleep. Regular women on the other hand, are just that – regular. You have nothing that makes you exceptionally beautiful, and after an all-nighter you look like you’ve been run over by the Gautrain three times, followed by a convoy of gusheshes, after getting caught up in taxi war crossfire.
Which of those two categories do you think you’re in?
Your answer to that question doesn’t really matter because in the end we're all in the same boat. All of us, we’ve all been fed the lie that your skin tone entitles someone else to make judgements about who you are. That someone else could be a twisted man who thinks all light-skinned women are emotional anorexics. Or it could be an advertising executive somewhere in New York who’s selling the idea that to be light-skinned is some kind of achievement. It could even be a group of dead racially prejudiced people whose lies about what is ‘beautiful’ are still entrenched in our society.
The truth is that some light skinned women envy the darker colouring of their dark skinned sisters. They wish they could be at the beach for hours and not turn Fifty Shades of Red. The truth is that all women hate being viewed as sexual objects and want to be valued for their character and abilities, not their looks. The truth is that both dark and light-skinned women struggle with insecurity, have endured the jokes and hurtful comments and are sick and tired of being hated for the colour of their skin.
A black woman’s beauty is deeper than her skin, whether she is dark or light.
"This article was originally published on www.realmukoko.wordpress.com. Visit Zola's blog to subscribe."
I don’t know when I started hating light-skinned women, but the seed was planted many years ago. Growing up we were all taught that you need to stay out of the sun if you want a beautiful complexion. You know, because ‘beautiful’ means ‘not dark’. We grew up watching our mothers use poisonous creams to lighten their skins and hearing things like, "Ah, she got her complexion from her dad - such an ugly dark baby!"
As we get older we learn that being light-skinned has become a social currency. Your guy friends ask you to hook them up with your yellow bone bestie. In the economy of black beauty, the light skinned ones are the goddesses – men flock to their temples to worship. What we see in movies often plays out in real life - regular darks skinned women sit at the feet of the light skinned one, playing the role of the dark skinned BFF.
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| The ugly truth behind why we love to hate light skinned women. |
I couldn't deny it.
My envy was triggered by situations like a night at the pub when that guy’s girlfriend wouldn’t stop gushing about how pretty she looked, like I was invisible. My envy reared its ugly head when men risked whiplash just to get a second and third look at her. My envy made me think it was unfair that a human can have such perfect skin, with a perfect complexion, overlaying perfect cheekbones.
So there I was staring at this goddess in front of me and realising that this envy thing was big and ugly and very much alive on the inside of me. Because Buhle is beautiful. And in her space I didn’t feel like I could be beautiful. No mirror, no well-lit the bathroom, no world had room for my kind of beauty when she was around.
If you’re dark-skinned and honest, you’ve probably felt the same way. You’ve hated going out with your friend to watch her hog everyone’s attention. You’ve struggled with loving her to bits but hating her at the same time. You’ve tried to make up for what you lack in looks by having a larger than life personality. You've often said to yourself and other, "I am dark, BUT beautiful." Why the ‘but’?
The truth behind many people's resentment towards light-skinned black women is this: People worship the idol of beauty that demands adherence to a false standard of beauty (and worth). On the surface this results in women bleaching their skin and getting silicone implants. The deeper consequence is an inability to love yourself and to love others.
I hate light-skinned women because I perceive them as having attained a status, reached a level, met a standard of beauty that I could never meet. I feel like when I’ll always be at the bottom of the ‘bae chain’ no matter how hard I try. She doesn’t have to try, she 'woke up like this'. The ugly truth is that my friend isn't the problem, she cannot help the way that she looks, my perception is the issue.
There are two kinds of women reading this: women the world considers ‘beautiful’ and the rest of us who are just regular human beings.
‘Beautiful’ women are like my light-skinned friend in the bathroom. You don't put filters on your Instagram selfies because you look perfect anyway. You look perfect without makeup, even after an all-nighter where you didn’t get a wink of sleep. Regular women on the other hand, are just that – regular. You have nothing that makes you exceptionally beautiful, and after an all-nighter you look like you’ve been run over by the Gautrain three times, followed by a convoy of gusheshes, after getting caught up in taxi war crossfire.
Which of those two categories do you think you’re in?
Your answer to that question doesn’t really matter because in the end we're all in the same boat. All of us, we’ve all been fed the lie that your skin tone entitles someone else to make judgements about who you are. That someone else could be a twisted man who thinks all light-skinned women are emotional anorexics. Or it could be an advertising executive somewhere in New York who’s selling the idea that to be light-skinned is some kind of achievement. It could even be a group of dead racially prejudiced people whose lies about what is ‘beautiful’ are still entrenched in our society.
The truth is that some light skinned women envy the darker colouring of their dark skinned sisters. They wish they could be at the beach for hours and not turn Fifty Shades of Red. The truth is that all women hate being viewed as sexual objects and want to be valued for their character and abilities, not their looks. The truth is that both dark and light-skinned women struggle with insecurity, have endured the jokes and hurtful comments and are sick and tired of being hated for the colour of their skin.
A black woman’s beauty is deeper than her skin, whether she is dark or light.
"This article was originally published on www.realmukoko.wordpress.com. Visit Zola's blog to subscribe."
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