Why it’s so hard for black women to gain self-confidence?

Recently, a video went viral on Instagram showing a dark-skinned woman bleaching her skin in a bathtub full of chemicals. She scraped off her skin, making it a few shades lighter. On social media, I see more and more testimonies of young black girls who don’t feel beautiful because of their skin colour, and have even been bullied about it. It got me thinking and I decided it was time to share my own story.

Skin whitening creams or chemical products to lighten your dark skin have been around for a long time. Just like hairdressers who permanently straighten your hair or put in smooth curls. The women who use the creams or straighten their hair all try to look like the ‘white woman’ in the media.

As a child, I was always insecure about my skin colour. I did everything I could to avoid being noticed. The media always showed the same type of woman: white, slim and with straight hair. I did not see women who looked like me. And that didn’t exactly help to build a positive self-image.

Burns on your scalp? Good sign!

At that time, during my childhood and youth, the only dark-skinned women in the media were the ‘light-skinned’ types, with straight hair or the perfect curls. Soon, I started to relax my hair as well. It was actually my mother who persuaded me, saying that such hair was more beautiful and easier to ‘tame’. I have always had a love-hate relationship with my hair: if I didn’t have braids, I didn’t dare to go out with my ‘natural’ hair. Or it had to be completely straight. So that I would not be left out.

When I think about the whole relaxing process now, I realise that it is too crazy for words: me, sitting quietly in a chair, while my mum smeared the product in my hair. After it was spread all over my hair, I had to wait until it started to burn. The fact that my scalp was burning was a good sign, because that meant it was working. Usually I had burns on my, but my hair was thin and dead — and that was the goal in the end. I have been detangling my hair almost all my life. It was a habit, something that belonged. Because if you want to be beautiful, you have to suffer, right? But I only found out years later why I did it. Not for myself, but to satisfy the compelling ‘ideal of beauty’. Every day I was confronted with the fact that my natural look did not satisfy. So what do you do, as a young girl? Change yourself, right.

“Can you speak African?”

As the only black person in a school with otherwise only white teenagers, I learned what an environment can do to your mental health. “Are you adopted?”, “Can I touch your hair?” “Can you speak African?” In the beginning, I just answered the questions because I understood that people were curious. I assumed they had never seen a black person in real life. And informing people was the key to teaching them something. But the questions became more and more stereotypical, and I noticed that I was still constantly stared at on the playground, because I was different from the rest.

The turning point, the point of no return, came when I walked across the playground and heard the word ‘brownie’ said behind me. I knew they had done it to provoke a reaction. Especially since there was an audience: a crowd of pupils looked at me expectantly. Nobody defended me.

It was only when I changed schools after the third year of secondary school and ended up in a class with all pupils of different origins that it struck me how hard the previous years had played on my self-image.

Always one of the whites

Although I was no longer the only ‘dark one’, I felt a kind of suspicion. I didn’t belong in the stereotypical image of the black girl either: I wasn’t busy, I didn’t have a loud voice and I certainly didn’t dare to stand up for my own opinion. Because that’s how black girls were and still are portrayed in the media and in my environment: as loud, assertive people, with bad hair and enormous self-confidence. That image had a big impact on me, but also on my attitude towards other black girls, because I am naturally very shy. I felt like I was always considered one of the whites, because I didn’t have that social, busy character in me — while that was expected of me. This also caused me to clash with the other black people at school. No matter how hard I tried to form new friendships, there was something in my subconscious that was blocking it.

No more white influencers

Today, I know that I should have first learned to build a foundation of self-confidence and self-love. And learn to accept my unique features, which I hated for so long. Because how could I make new friends if I felt insecure about my own skin and wasn’t proud of myself? That is where the search for myself began. And what I learned there is that you have to surround yourself with people who look like you. So that was the period that I de-followed all the white influencers on Instagram and started looking for people who look like me, but who also have the same goal: to inspire other black girls and show them that we can do and be anything we want.

You can be anyone you want to be

We have to get the stereotype of the black woman out of our system, so that the next generation of black girls don’t have to go through what I went through. We can do this by giving them the idea right from the start that black women and white women are equal. By depicting black girls in children’s books, and showing them in programmes on TV and online. Because that’s what I missed in my childhood. But also by referring to role models like Michelle Obama or Serena Williams who prove that black people can be just as successful.

People on Instagram like @Dazhaneleah, @Chloekitembo (a Belgian influencer of colour) and @Melachild helped me build my self-confidence. Today, I stand where I am and I am who I am, thanks in part to them. They gave me the message that I could do anything, as long as I worked hard enough. They convinced brand managers to introduce more diversity into their campaigns. And, of course, I could relate to their stories of how they had dealt with their insecurity. On YouTube you can also find countless videos of black girls sharing their stories and how they dealt with the racism and insecurity of their childhood and youth.

It is okay

There are many young people who are going through the same thing as me. I want to tell black girls that they need to surround themselves with people like them. Stop comparing yourself to popular girls online. And: it’s totally okay to not look the same as everyone else.

Today’s young people are capable of making a real change. Ten years ago, this might have been more difficult. There was so little diversity in campaigns, music videos or TV series. But last year, Miss USA, Miss Teen USA, Miss World and Miss Universe were all women of colour. And that is the proof: yes, we can.

Published on 09/04/2020 on Stampmedia