Dark Girls: A Sliding Scale

Hopefully you watched that trailer of the upcoming documentary Dark Girls.  It’s a pretty captivating clip.

When I watched this preview I found it interesting that while I am aware of this problem, I was not grasping how deeply it was affecting people.  Hearing these women talk about how they wanted to be lighter was eye-opening for me because as a child growing up, I also wanted to be lighter…or darker.  I am sort of a light-skinned girl.  I am but only because I’m mixed (black/white), there was little chance I would have been very dark.  In my town you were more than likely white or maybe you were Asian (probably Cambodian but Indian and others as well) and then there were a few black kids. 

When I was very young, I wanted to look like my mother.  I’m sure part of my wanting to look like her came from our closeness but part of it came from wanting to belong somewhere. Nobody on TV really looked like me.  Absolutely nobody in my town except for my brother looked like me and I just thought blonde, straight hair and white skin was normal.  It’s slightly embarrassing how much I was in love with the show Today’s Special because I really really loved watching how Jeff (a white man) and Jodie (a black woman) interacted.  Today’s Special and Sesame Street.  Thank the heavens for them. It was the rare time I felt like there were other people in the world who had similar lives.  Because I totally lived with muppets.  Just kidding.

I still love how this show made me feel.

When I got a little older, into later elementary school/middle school, the few black kids that would be in my classes, I would be jealous of their hair and their skin color.  I didn’t feel light enough to be white and I didn’t feel dark enough to be black.  White people had similar hair.  Black people had similar hair.  I didn’t have either.  This was further compounded when I wanted to straighten my hair and all of the white(?) products were too gentle and the “ethnic” products were too harsh.   It wasn’t until my 20s, when I really started loving myself that I even stopped being jealous.  Now I’m just sort of in love with almost every type of woman.  Especially as an adult it’s been weird for me to realize how many black women go through so much trouble to have straight hair when I would have killlllled for the chance to have an actual afro.  GORGEOUS.  People still tell me I should “fro out” my hair, not realizing that my hair is not cool enough for such things.

Let’s pause for a minute and you can tell Ms. Badu that she’s not beautiful.  I don’t care if it’s a wig in this picture.  Imagine how much richer our lives would be JUST to see variations on that?  To have our eyes and minds working and processing.  Our monotonous routines enhanced by the little differences between us all?!  A feast for the eyes if we all were ourselves.

How is this not awesome?

Though light-skinned, because I wasn’t raised around many black people, I became a dark-skinned girl by default.  I hated my hair.  I didn’t date anyone until I was 23 and moved to Los Angeles.  Without knowing this was some sort of known phenomenon, I just never trusted that a guy would date me and treat me the way he would a white girl.  I know without a doubt that a lot of men find me attractive or would be willing to sleep with me, I get enough catcalls in the street to not have an issue with that but growing up I always felt like I was just some form of safe experimentation.  Do you really want to be with me?  White guys gave me the impression that they wanted to be with a black chick but also have the built-in insurance to deny it because I’m also white.

The only time I’ve ever heard the term light-skinned was from other black people and that also put me off because it made me feel like a prize.  I think there’s a lot of truth in it when the woman says that being darker makes you more of a sexual object.  I think a lot of guys really like me but I don’t look how love looks.  I’m not white.  I’m not a tiny, white girl.

I’m tall, I’m curvy, I have ridiculous curly hair, I’m loud and opinionated and I’m brown.  Is that a fairytale?  Is that who you see raising your kids?  Is that girl a romcom heroine?  Probably not if you’ve had a look at the media.  I’m pretty sure I’ve been left for not fitting into that image and it is disheartening.  I’m a bit of a Denise Huxtable and I don’t think many guys close their eyes and have this image appear.

Denise and I will make you a Gordon Gartrell shirt! Save your money!

So for me, watching this on the left side of the scale, I hadn’t ever imagined what it would be like on the far right of the spectrum.  I never imagined what it was like to have the rest of the spectrum, for my lack of better vocabulary, against you.  To have everyone reinforcing the same ideas.  I didn’t like how my hair was different and my skin was freckled but the minute I visited my family in Tennessee, everyone immediately complimented how I had “that good hair” and whether I believed them or not doesn’t matter, I still had positive reinforcement. These women don’t get that.  For some of these women, they’re disguising their hair from day 1.  If they fro it out, it’s the anomaly, even among women who otherwise look like them.  Imagine you went out your front door, just as you are right now and people just looked at you weird for wearing your hair down.  Or someone said thank god they didn’t have your skin color?  I can’t.  It breaks my heart.  And there’s certainly no refuge in the media.  Almost all of the black actresses are brown, reaffirming that dark black doesn’t really exist in our lives. 

So much thinking just from this short clip, I can’t wait to see what conversation the full-length documentary inspires.  Because a discussion needs to be had.  Feel free to discuss here if you’d like.  I’m always curious how other people feel.

Dark Girls is still fundraising and will be out later this year.  Feel free to donate here.

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