For years, I have struggled with being a black girl. I remember vividly being in sixth grade; I grew up in a predominately white neighborhood and not many of my classmates looked like me. One day, I found a note in my homeroom class that said “I don’t know why boys like Morgan, she stuffs her bra”. I was one of the more developed girls in the sixth grade class and for that I did get UN wanted attention from my male classmates. Naturally (not saying for everyone) but black girls tend to develop more than white girls. For years, I struggled with trying to hide my protruding hips and thighs with too big pants and loose shirts. I was attracted to the white boys with blue eyes and never could understand why instead of asking me to be their girlfriends, they only commented on my physical features. I was merely a set of big boobs to them (because boobs don’t need a color) and for my whole elementary school years, I was never once called “beautiful”. Freshman year of high school came and I even went as far as dying my hair a lighter color because looking in the mirror, I hated my black hair. I wanted to match the ideology of beautiful. I wanted to have long colored hair, a small waist, smaller boobs, and especially a smaller butt. I didn’t think my big forehead, my full lips, or my brown skin was beautiful; especially not my brown skin. I started talking like I was them, annunciating every letter in every word. I even chimed in on teasing the other black girls who were darker than me, as if I was not one of them. I excluded myself from them because I was a Beverly girl, who was “light skinned”.
Until one day I woke up.
I can’t tell you exactly when it was; it being the day I realized that my melanin was a gift. Maybe it was sophomore year. The first time a black man called me beautiful. See, black men we need you more than you realize. We need you to save us from ourselves. We need you because, I remember being a young black girl looking in the mirror & wishing I was as beautiful as my sixth grade classmates. I remember touching my hair and forcing my mom to put chemicals that literally burn our hair cells out because I wanted so desperately for my hair to be straight. I remember thinking that maybe if I was a little lighter, then I could get someone, anyone to notice me.
Maybe this revolution has been the cause for my revelation. I believe the Black Lives Matters movement is not only important for our equality, but also so I could feel how I feel now; not like the sixth grade me, but the black woman in her 20s me. The one who realizes that not only does black women need our black man but vice versa. We need each other. Our queens need to protect our kings. For the first time in my life I realized that black love is important. I am not writing this saying that interracial love is not important too. Every type of love is beautiful. I am writing this because black love is powerful. We are able to uplift each other because we know how it feels to be let down by the world. We are able to understand what it’s like being the only black person in a room. We understand how it’s like to be followed around in a store because of the color of our skin. We understand what it’s like to be judged.
Stop calling us crazy and using that as an excuse not to love a black woman. Black woman are not crazy. We are broken. For years through movies, magazine ads, commercials, and especially music we have been told that we are not good enough. We have been told that our hair is nappy, that the way we talk is not correct, that our skin is too dark and our hips are too wide. We have been cheated on, lied to, and disrespected by our Kings for far too long. We have been oppressed by the very people who came from a mother’s womb the same color as us. Black women need to be loved. The sixth grade me needed to be loved.
Until I started to love myself.
When she stares back at me, I observe those full lips I used to hate. As I decide whether or not to put on foundation today, I put the brush down and outline that brown skin with my fingers instead. I perfectly shape those thick eyebrows that lay on my “fivehead” and I comb that nappy hair. I take full body selfies now. I find the perfect lighting and post pictures with #MelaninMonday on Mondays. I pick jeans that fit tight around my huge thighs and shirts that show (not too much) but just enough cleavage.
So for my fellow black girls reading this: We are the Michelle Obama’s, the Kerry Washington’s, the Simone Biles’; we are living in a world where our skin is not accepted but they cannot help but recognize our success. Every time a black girl wins, we have to support them because we have to remind each other these three things: We are power, we are loved, and we are beautiful.
So what is it like being a black women in her 20s?
Hard as hell. But worth every single day.
