Transparency time: I cried the first time I heard brown skin girl by Beyoncé. I had to try and hold back the ugly cry in front of my family. Some of you understand why, but for those who don’t; We dark skin women have this on going battle with our self esteem for a long time and as a kid lighter skin is all I saw on every single medium. Then I grew up in the 90’s and early 2000’s when “light skin was in”; that’s literally the saying “light skin is in”. Do you know what did to my self esteem? I hated taking photos of myself, I would stay out of the sun. Forget about dating, if you liked a guy the first thing you would think about is 'I hope he likes dark skin girls'. The list goes on that we would need a book to write about it. Anyway...
While watching Beyoncé’s beautiful ‘Black is King’ music visuals, brown skin girls came on, all these emotions, thoughts in my head, flashbacks to my childhood, I broke down. Because, in truth, I needed that song when I was a kid; and to see Sage watching the video, dancing, singing along, taking the words in, and comprehending, it made me feel so happy. I kind of felt like a kid again, sort of. Even though I tell Sage every single day, you’re a black girl, we are great, fearless, smart, etc etc. In addition to talking about black hair and how versatile it is, just so she doesn’t feel like it’s lesser than that girl with long wavy hair. However, truthfully, there’s but so much I can do to make her confident in her own skin, she has to see it as well. I am so grateful for that song, it couldn't have come at a better time. I can’t even listen to it without choking up.
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