Self Love

One of the hardest things for me to come to grips with when I was younger was that, there are many different types of pretty. Growing up dark-skinned in South Africa was quite the traumatising experience. I am a Ghanaian girl and where I come from, it was not too discriminated against. Granted, there are a lot of skin bleaching brands back home that are quite publicly advertised, free of euphemisms and the like. But I never felt like I needed them to be beautiful. Bleaching was more of a lifestyle choice you could make if you felt that, personally, it was the right thing for you. Girls with lighter skin were not as fetishised as they are in South Africa. Children in my class in primary school always made it a point to remind me that because of melanin rich skin tone, I was ugly and would never have any friends and, for years, I believed them. It wasn't until I discovered Fuck Yeah! Dark Skin girls on Tumblr a few years back, that learned that Dark Girls can be pretty too.

I think it is really sad that this form of racism, known as colourism, exists and works to even turn people of the same race against each other, due to what? "The depth of the colour of one's skin". If it is a more than extremely stupid to hate and discriminate against people of a different race, how much more insane is the hatred and discrimation against your own race for their skin colour?

I was so glad I found this Tumblr and was starting to see that I too, was beautiful. But this new found love for my skin, stemmed from finding out that there were others that could love it too. I hadn't yet learned to appreciate myself and who I was. True self love, I believe, comes from understanding who you are inside and learning to accept your inner most self. Lots of reflection, meditation and prayer is needed to understand who you are and that you are indeed special. I'm not the most religious person out there but I do believe in God and the universe and that there is a higher reasoning beyond our human understanding. I think finding this out was the key to loving myself. I started to think that out of all the things that could happen or not happen, I am here and I am me. I exist for some reason and therefore, I must matter. I do matter and I am worth loving.

Dark skin or light skin, Black or White, skinny or fat, there is beauty in all of us. Sometimes others can't see that but none of what anyone thinks matters as long as you know that you are beautiful and worth loving. I realised that when I learned to love myself, no one else could make me feel less that i knew I was. In fact, something strange happened, no one even tried to. Because I knew I was beautiful, everyone could see that beauty shine from within.