I Like Your Skin Colour

Something happened to me recently that was both funny and thought provoking and I would love to share it with you because I’m hoping it will help someone today.

This summer, at my place of work (I’m an intern), a new staff member got hired because I was set to leave in about two weeks and I was supposed to teach the new girl the ropes. Although I had never seen her before, there was something that got my attention though; my supervisor and the graphic designer (those I work directly with) had already told me about the girl using words like “beautiful” and that she was even @light-skinned”. It struck me that they were making indirect passes at my complexion because I am dark-skinned, not deep brown chocolate like Lupita Nyong’o but caramel topping like Kate Henshaw maybe.

And so, I kind of got pissed off because it made me remember that there was still a lot of colour discrimination even amongst Africans and dark-skinned ones at that. So I asked them that since they were dark-skinned, why was it such a big deal that she was light-skinned (I have absolutely nothing against fair people, they are very beautiful and so are dark people). Anyway, I just tried to make sure that they I was knew I was happy about her resumption and let it slide but their opinions kind of bothered me.

And then something wonderful happened to me on my way home that day. I had crossed the first half of the road and was trying to find a way to go about the other half because that was more complex and a guy beside me who I didn’t know from anywhere looked at me and said “I like your skin colour.” That made me remember what happened in the office earlier. I smiled at him and told him thank you. My guy did not stop there oh, he went on to ask me what cream I was using. And I told him I use normal petroleum jelly, like Vaseline (petroleum jelly sha). I Then I asked him to help me cross and the rest…well.

My point here is that, whatever your skin colour, you are beautiful. Not everyone may see that right now but the ones that know know. Light-skinned or dark-skinned, you are too unique and awesome to feel inferior or uglier than someone else because of whatever skin colour they have. So please, don’t try to change your look to please the world or haters, just be yourself and the people who’ll appreciate you won’t be bothered about it.