Fighting For My Skin

Chapter 1- You're Pretty for A Darkskined Girl

"It's 8:42." Yara's sister Ada whispered into her room.

Yara was already awake. She woke up with the sun. She didn't feel tired at all. But her eyes felt burdensome, and her head felt full. She didn't want to get up, but class starts at 9:00, and she'd be in for one if her mom found out about her being late for class.

Yara was homeschooled. So was her twin sister. And her younger brother Leo.

Yara sat up on her bed and slowly rubbed the sides of her head. The sun was so bright outside, it gave her a headache. But she loved the sun. It was the one thing that she could trust. It was reliable.

She got up and walked down the hall to the bathroom. The door was closed and the light was on. She knocked.

"Im using the bathroom!". He brother sighed in a sing-song tone.

"You need to hurry up!", Yara mimicked back. She leaned on the wall across from the bathroom thinking about was classes she had today. English. That made her remember that she had a paper due today. Her thoughts were interrupted by her brother walking out the bathroom.

"You didn't wash your hands." Yara mumbled in a disgusted tone.

Her brother ignored her and walked into the living room to get his computer for school.

Yara walked into the bathroom and puled open the first drawer to grab the toothpaste. She then reached over to get her toothbrush out of the toothbrush cup. She rinsed her toothbrush, put the toothpaste on, then rinsed it again. She felt like that was the only natural way to begin brushing your teeth.

As she brushed her teeth, she looked at herself in the mirror. The old her would be disgusted with the way the toothpaste made its way around the outside of her mouth. But she know found it normal. She spit in the sink and grabbed the mouthwash off the counter. She hated this mouthwash. The tasted lasted to long and made her food taste weird.

After she rinsed her mouth, she began to wash her face. She patted her face dry when she was done, then applied moisturizer to her face. She looked in the mirror. She loved how she looked. She was naturally beautiful. She's a 16 year old darkskined girl, who isn't allowed to wear makeup, in the 21st century. So, as you could imagine, it was hard for her to love the way she looked.

But she did. And she's never felt more good about herself.

She smiled in the mirror and walked out of the bathroom, turning the light out as she does.

She walked to living room and saw her sister and brother on the couch with their school laptops open. She was always the last one to start school. But she was never late to class. She walked to get her laptop off of the tv stand and sat on the couch. She let out a sigh as she opened her computer and held the power button down. The laptop turned on, the bright bue screen made her eyes feel sore. She lowered the brightness.

"Can I borrow your charger?" Her brother questioned. This annoyed her. Not because he wanted to use her charger, but that he wouldn't let her use anything, yet he asked her for he things. Hypocrisy and selfishness irritated Yara. Yet, she rolled her eyes without looking up and mumbled,

"Sure."

Leo got up to grab the charger off th tv stand where her computer was sitting a few minutes ago. Leo was only 11 months younger than Yara and Ada. Their birthdays were 30 days apart. Leos was on January 16, ang Yara's and Ada's was February 16. They were literally the same age for 30 days. Like triplets. But Yara took pride and power in being the oldest. No matter how old they were.

Yara joined her class and clicked on a new tab. She quickly typed in 'Colorism in The Beauty Industry'. She had been keeping up with this subject for months. Every time a new article came out, she read it. She couldn't understand how the women with the most beautiful skin, could be judged as less beautiful.

She was so into the topic of colorism. She could talk about it for hours. It disgusted her. More than racism. She always thought, If we are already divided and placed on the bottom by white people, why would you divide our community of Brown people. You're doing to darkskins what white people do to all of us. And that made her sick.

She is a darkskin. And she couldn't remember a person who didn't have something negative to say about her skin. Or a joke about how dark she was. She was tired of hear people calling her "Burnt biscuit", or "Burnt chicken nugget". Or telling her to " Stay out of the sun", or saying she "looked like a shadow". A couple people even went as far to say that she looked naked when she wore black clothes.

They were all jokes she's heard a thousand times. She remembered when she used to come home crying about it. Her mom would ask her "Are you these things that people are calling?"

"No." she would whisper

"Then why do you care?" her mom would respond.

Yara never had a real response. Sometimes, it made her upset. She was always bullied and rarely would her mom step up. But she would go into protection mode if it were for someone else.

And Yara was young, she didn't realized what has happening, She didn't know why people talked about her for being dark. It was her skin, and she never had a problem with it. She didn't know it was offensive when people told her "You're pretty for a darkskined girl.". But as she grew older, she realized, that as long as she could remember, she had been a victim of colorism. By her peers, her mom, her cousins, her siblings, and even people she consider friends.

It doesn't happen much now, but that's because its a trend to uplift darkskins. Even when the feeling isn't genuine.

She never had anybody to talk to about this situation because no one she's known has experienced it in the ways she has. She was the only darkskined child. Her twin sister Ada was a caramel brown, and her brother Leo was yellow like the sun. Yara always thought it was cool how a Brown woman could birth so many colors of a child. But no one wanted to be darkskined. And she wanted to why. When she discover how deep colorism was in the black community, she has been stuck trying to understand it ever since. What is the real solution to colorism? How do you get light skins and brow skins to welcome you into your OWN community? The community that people with dark skin created. The short answer is, you can't.