Have you ever been made to feel that your “look” is less-than what is deemed beau­ti­ful?  Have you ever looked at another girl and defined your own beauty based on her phys­i­cal appear­ance?  Have you ever deter­mined that your image, since it didn’t bring you the atten­tion of the boy that had caught your eye, was not enough?

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On a Feb­ru­ary 16, 2010 episode of The Tyra Banks show, there was a seg­ment titled: “I’m 9 and I Hate my Face”.   There were sev­eral girls fea­tured, but the cap­tion belonged to a young African-American girl that felt un-pretty based on neg­a­tive com­ments that had been made to her by some­one she “thought” was her friend.  To feel pretty, she said, her pref­er­ence was to have lighter skin and lighter eyes because in that way, she’d get more atten­tion from boys — like her friends.

When I was 12, my “friend” and I were sit­ting on the stairs to our apart­ments.  It was a nice sunny day and I was sit­ting a few stairs down from her — yet fac­ing her — which meant, I was fac­ing the sun.  She looked at me and said “you would be so pretty if you had light-colored eyes”.  That stung.  She would go on to tell me that if my com­plex­ion was lighter, I would be pretty.  Basi­cally, my brown-skinned tone was not enough to qual­ify for “pretty”.  Wow.  Two things that I could never change as I was born with both.  So, there it was, at the age of 12, if my own friends didn’t think I was beau­ti­ful, I couldn’t pos­si­bly be, right?  Your friends know the most and tell you the truth about every­thing, right?  Not nec­es­sar­ily.  Yet I believed it for years.  For years, I died my hair because I believed that lighter hued hair would give the facade of a shade not as dark as my own.

Then there were the boys.  I thought I was in place to be Ronnie’s girl­friend.  We spent time together out­side with every­one else.  Me, often with his arm wrapped around my shoul­der, or him, hold­ing my hand — nice moments.  Until Angel moved into the neigh­bor­hood, that is.  Angel with the curly hair, light skin, and green eyes.  It was as though Ron­nie never met me.  His atten­tion diverted to her…and there it remained.  I was dev­as­tated.  Fur­ther dev­as­tated when the same friend told me that “he chose Angel because she has ‘good hair’ and those pretty eyes”.

Those were defin­ing moments in my life — and moments that turned into years of me doubt­ing that I was any­where near pretty, beau­ti­ful, gor­geous — or if I would ever grad­u­ate from “cute”.

One day, I don’t remem­ber quite when it was, things changed.  I stopped dying my hair and a “real friend” of mine said to me “So, you are finally happy with the way you look?” I hadn’t even real­ized.  It was just some­thing that kind of hap­pened, I guess.  I was happy when it did, but I can’t with all hon­esty, say the exact moment.  I do know it made me think long and hard about that road I’d just trav­eled.  At some point, with­out even know­ing it, I embraced ME.

What are all the things I like about my appear­ance now that I may have dis­missed before?  My caramel-colored com­plex­ion.  The way my eyes are shaped.  The color of my hair.  The way my hair­line comes down close to my eye­brows.  I don’t have the plea­sure of wear­ing the pretty bangs, but it makes for very appeal­ing, off-the-face hair­styles.  My cheek­bones because there is a slight hint of dim­ples there that I just love!

“How happy are you with what you see in the mirror?”