Why be sad when you can be bad ?

Hello my lovelies, welcome back to the colorism series. Today, I am writing on something that I think dark skinned black women can really benefit from. I would love to write on colorism in Asia but I am not well equipped to do so , therefore, I am writing from the perspective of an African black girl. Even so, shout out to my dark skinned women all over the world.

This post is about unlearning negative stereotypes tied to dark skinned black women and revamping your broken self esteem in 11 powerful ways.  I will share the first five on this blog and the next six on the next post.

TIP ONE

•  Romanticize yourself : Yes, you got to put yourself on a pedestal. Other groups of women have been doing this for years and it is accepted as the norm. Light skinned women can blue tick people, men and women alike and it is passed as ‘oh she is light skinned’ but when a dark skinned woman does it, it certainly becomes something really  bad. People will question your audacity to blue tick and that is where the romanticizing comes in. You don’t have to be a solid ten to romanticize yourself. Just say I’m too dark skinned to reply.  Say no to people spaces and things that don’t deserve you. As a dark skin you have been conditioned to say yes to everything but it has to stop.  If Hazel E (pictured below) can romanticize herself and call dark skinned women ugly collectively because she is light skinned, then we too can romanticize ourselves.TIP TWO
•  Stay away from the ‘dark skinned men are soooo fine bandwagon’; So social media is doing it again. Dark skinned men are drooled over, left right and center. They are fine and they don’t need us dark skinned women to remind them. Just like every woman is not a feminist, not every dark skinned man is colorist but sadly most of them are. Why support people who want nothing to do with you? We can certainly bet on a million dollars on who these dark skinned men really  want and it is not us (and that is ok). After all they are getting ample admiration from other sources so why ego stroke them at your expense.  Instead of drooling over them, join skill share and learn something, read a book or drool over people who genuinely love the tone of your skin. If you cannot resist drooling over and praising people who don’t want you, then you got to seek help fast.
• TIP THREE
• Try femininity (Take care of your physical self) ;Dark skin is associated with masculinity and that explains why you are defeminized and the light skinned guy at the corner is asked for lip balm while he is chilling with other men. We have been defeminized to a point of self hate and it shows. Look around. Most dark skinned black women don’t care about their physical appearance. We are taught to be house keepers, to be self-sacrificing, last options and that trickles down to putting ourselves last including our own bodies. May be that is why people think we are ugly and that is not true. Therefore, try to take care of yourself and put yourself first; that is being feminine.
• TIP FOUR
•  Support each other (Validate each other); Have you seen how Muslim men call each other brother despite being strangers? That is it. When you see a dark skinned girl, just compliment her, hype her. It could be on social media or in the streets. Let’s face it everyone needs some validation. If you think I am kidding, go check out the light skinned girl version of Beyoncé’s brown skin girl. If light skinned girls felt ‘left-out’ by just one hit song and yet there are countless songs that praise them, then that clearly shows how much validation is imperative. We as dark skinned girls need to validate each other whenever we get the chance to do it. We can follow Instagram pages, subscribe to You tube channels, listen to podcasts, follow blogs and watch movies that support us, apart from being nice to a stranger.
• TIP FIVE
• Refuse non-corrective promotion in all spaces:  If you are a Kenyan reading this, you have probably heard of or watched the new popular tv show, Maria. I really don’t watch it consistently but I noticed something about the two ladies (characters) who are liked by the rich man’s son. Maria, the dark skinned one is portrayed as a poor unkempt girl from the ghetto and the other lady who is light skinned is portrayed as a lady who probably attended a finishing school and is perfectly spruced up. I just wonder what the reaction would have been if it was the opposite. Do you remember Nicki Minaj’s Fendi photoshoot (the picture is down below) where a millionaire dark skinned hair stylist was portrayed in such unpleasant light? I think the media can also promote the face of dark skinned women in admirable positions and dark skinned women can say no to positions that perpetuate the ‘ugly, defeated, bottom of the totem pole’ narrative among dark skinned women.
• 

Illustration of the week;

There are no ugly women, just the lazy ones. So stop letting colorism make you feel ugly and defeated. Wake up and put in the effort. You can be sad and ‘ugly’ or you can be bad and fancy. The big question is why be sad when you can be bad, dark sin girl?