Growing up, there was always this standard of beauty that I looked up to. I grew up in a neighborhood where not too many people other than my mother looked like me, and even my mother, who I absolutely adore with every bone in my body, still did not look quite like me. She is with straight hair down to her hourglass waist. Her skin is painted a caramel that is so standing smooth that I swear no one could have that perfect mixture that she has. Her face is small and round, but she has beautiful freckles that were perfectly placed by God himself. Then there was me, a dark skin little girl with a head full of curls who had not hit puberty yet. That’s it. I took after my father’s skin tone. When I was little I would ask my mom, “why could I have not been as light as you?” I would ask, “why can’t my hair be as straight as yours?” She would look me right in my eyes and tell me “You are everything I prayed for.” I would roll my eyes and say, “why couldn’t you have prayed for me to be light skin?” At the time, the kids in my school would always make fun of me for my skin and my hair, that even when straightened, it would never stay completely straight. I wanted to change who I was. I wanted to fit in, but everything about me stood out. Even though every day my mother would admire me and tell me how beautiful I was, I never felt I reached that standard of beauty that she had so effortlessly. Do you want to know why I felt like this? Because I never had self-love.
As I got older I thought this self-love thing would just come to me, but it actually got worse. As Instagram, tweeter, Facebook, vine, and other social media were introduced to me, it gave me a wider platform to compare myself to more women that didn’t look like me. It was so simple to scroll and then stumble upon a girl that was everything I was not but everything I wish I could be. From her small fitted waste, to her smooth light skin, to her straight non curly hair, it was simply something I didn’t have and probably never will. Social media never was too social for me. It was always very silent, only hearing the light tap of my thumb as I liked some random girl's picture that I knew nothing about, except for the fact that she ate tacos every Tuesday and the side she liked to tilt her head as she took a selfie. I didn’t know her struggles. I didn’t know what she had gone through or what she was going through. And I probably never will. She only showed me the good side which brought out the bad side in me. Why? Because I never had self-love.
Then something shifted. It was the summer going into my freshman year in college. My high school boyfriend and I broke up and it was like everything froze. No one was there to remind me how beautiful I was. I moved out of my parents’ house and into a small dorm room and no one woke me up and told me “I was everything they prayed for” like my mother would every morning. The “Good Morning beautiful” texts stopped and like Beyoncé said it was just me myself and I. I asked myself why did I need to depend on these people to reassure me that I am beautiful? I took one good long look at myself and I didn’t blink. I just looked at myself and it was like in that moment God revealed to me everything He created. A beautiful chocolate girl that never takes no for an answer and will stand for what she believes. A beautiful chocolate girl who had dreams that she would accomplish. A beautiful chocolate girl that did not need the reassurance of a man or social media that she is beautiful. I started to gain self-love and I practice reassuring myself daily that I was beautiful by simply standing in the mirror, looking myself in my eyes, and saying the words I always looked for in other people : You. Are. Beautiful. A few weeks into doing that I realized that a big part was standing in the way of loving myself and it was my hair. My hair was crazy damaged from heat. So, I decided to cut it. All of it. I fell completely in love with myself in that moment. I could see all the features that God handmade just for me. I saw my beautiful baby curls. I saw my big brown eyes. No other standard of beauty mattered anymore. The only thing that mattered was my standard of beauty and my standard of beauty had become me. I became that standard of beauty that I looked up to. Why? Because I finally gained the self-love.
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