Hi Loves, hope your all doing well.

I decided to document about my road to self acceptance. This is a journey that I have travelled on for a long time but finally I’m at peace with my self.

I remember being in school and having some boy bully me because of the colour of my skin. In my school days being of a darker skin tone wasn’t considered “beautiful”. Every day I had to go through the process of hearing the same boy torment me about my colour.”Your too black”, he would say.”You got lost in the dark” and so on. These words kept piercing through my heart. I started to question myself, am I good enough and definitely felt that I wasn’t “pretty” enough. The boy who was doing the bullying was black himself, so I failed to understand why my shade disturbed him so much.

I struggled with my self-esteem and thought I had to change In order to be loved. Over the years I have learned that insecure people will often insult or bully others to feel better about themselves, and I believe that was the case with my bully.

I believe many people of colour have been through this process and some are still going through it. They’ve felt inadequate due to the colour of their skin. It is a constant struggle and challenge that we are facing in our society.

With mainstream media constantly highlighting what “beauty” is, it a struggle for both young and mature women of colour to believe that they are beautiful whilst living in our society.Skin lightening products are used by millions of women and men across the globe. Toning,lightening,brightening,whitening are the regular products on the market. While the marketing slogans claim the products are promoting skin enhancement, the underlying effects are pretty identical.

But the issue of black beauty extends beyond skin colour and complexion. There’s also a cultural perception about hair, which is that certain textures are better than others. I recently saw a petition on petition on change.org about Beyoncé’s daughter, Blue Ivy. Apparently, a group of citizens felt that her growing hair was “unkempt” and demanded Beyoncé combs it. What kind of message are we sending when thousands of people gather online to condemn a small child’s natural curly kinky strands. It is very clear that there’s a stigma against ethnic variations from sleek and straight and we need to recognise and appreciate that we are all born with unique gifts and appearance and we must learn to celebrate our uniqueness.

Beauty is not only measured in skin colour and hair texture, it is also measured through sizes. Thick vs skinny. The pressure is on people to look a certain way, all in the name of beauty. Women are starving themselves in hope for the perfect size, equally men are resulting to desperate measures to bulk up their bodies using steroids and other means to maintain their frame. The wrong motives have been put in place and it seems like it’s no longer about staying healthy but rather competing to look like certain people i.e celebrities.

Beauty is truly beyond skin,true beauty lies within. The beautiful personality inside that echoes through to the world. That golden heart , that can’t be seen but it’s works are visible. The world needs to get to the point where beauty is not totally measured by outward appearance because in reality the beauty of a face will fade as time goes, but the beauty of heart will grow as you mature.

I am learning to love and embrace myself. Love every part of me. My chocolate skin tone may not be everyone’s first choice and that’s ok. Yes there are plenty of things about my structure I may not be completely satisfied with, but these are the same things that distinguish me from the rest. My kinky hair may be difficult at times to keep up but I thank God I even have hair.

Yes black is beautiful, but also is white, brown, yellow and the many shades in between. Whatever shade you maybe, embrace it and be proud of it. If God wanted you to be a particular shade he would have made you so. Let’s not allow the pressures of this world to define who we are, or what we ought to look like.

Each and every day I am learning to embrace what God gave me naturally. I use the word ‘learning’ because to me , life is a learning process. I refuse to allow this society to define me as a person. I am who I am.

We have a long way to go to change the way we look at and interpret beauty but I’m happy to say and mean it that I am beautiful. It may not be your perfect definition of beauty but it’s me and I love me. Finally I have learned to feel empowered, and love myself just the way I am and I pray you begin to accept and love yourself just as you are.

Love always

Chrisy Diamond