Being told fair is better:
For so long being light-skinned has been regarded as better than being dark-skinned and that is not okay. I think one of the worst things that existed when I was growing up was a product called Fair and Lovely. This product is a whitening cream that is supposed to bleach and whiten skin. It is a degrading form of skin whiting and I don’t believe it is a healthy form of improving your skin. Unfortunately, this whitening cream still exists, but many millennials find it problematic because it promotes light skin people as prettier than dark-skinned.
Being told that if I just lost a few more pound I would look perfect:
This one really tugged on my insecurities. I had so many aunts and uncles come up to me and say things like, “You look nice if you just lost a few more pounds you would look so much prettier.” I will never understand why they felt they were allowed to have an opinion on my body and yet here we are. I think the most frustrating think about it when I think about it now is that I was incapable of fighting back because I was so insecure and so young.
Being told that I should get married to a rich man:
I’m not really sure why it was necessary for people to tell a 13-year-old girl who they should marry but it still happened. I was told to look for a rich person as if I could not be self-sufficient. I was also told to look for a man is if my sexual preference was out of the question.
I still can’t fathom how people had the audacity to say these things to a vulnerable young girl but they did. If someone said these things to me today I would not stand for it. And it is important to me that other young girls should not have to deal with these things the way I did.