A Girl Like Me

This video surprisingly struck so many different emotions in me. It got me thinking, got me angry, sad, and ashamed. By the end I felt tired and inspired, but most importantly, aware.

When the girls in the video started talking about how light colored people were more attractive, I started thinking about all the black people in media today. Its funny because the most popular black people today have the whitest features, for example, Beyonce Knowles (who always gets reamed for her bigger-than-normal butt) has a very slim nose, lighter skin, and white-like hair. Haley Barry also has these same features; in fact, she’s actually half white but is considered black in the media. I always wonder why that is when people are half black/half white, why they always claim black and disregard the white side?

The only thing I don’t agree with was that one girl whose mother told her to change her hair because she was starting to look African and the daughter responds with, “I am African.” At first I didn’t agree with the daughter about her being African. Her family has probably been in America for centuries so it’s not like she has any ties to America. But then I started thinking about people that come from Germany and they have been in America for a while yet they still say they are German. It was then that I felt ashamed for having such naive thinking in which I was glad to have watched this video for it opened my eyes a little more.

I then was a bit humored as I watched these girls talk about how they wanted to be lighter when they were younger, because I used to think the same thing. As a child I was always running around in the sun and as an American Indian I would get really, really dark. I remember looking at my mom, who is completely white, and looking at my skin and praying to God that I could be whiter. I would even sadly pray to be so white that you could see my veins through my skin like the girls in school. I think the worst was when I was in cheerleading, it seemed that all the really popular and pretty girls were white and I don’t know if I wanted to be white to be popular or if I wanted to be whiter to be considered beautiful. Either way, I remember that feeling of hating that I was dark. Looking back on it now, especially since being tan is considered beautiful, I scorn myself for being so stupid as to pray to have white skin.

The video then moved on to talk about bleaching cream that blacks would use to make their skin whiter. I thought this was crazy and absurd that someone would be that willing to make themselves change. I then started thinking about how bleaching cream was a very prominent in Asian cultures as well. Being white in Asian cultures is placed with high importance. You never even see a dark Asian, whether male or female, in any advertisements. You can even see this Asian stereotype of beauty passed on in America as I’m sure you’ve seen Asians with umbrellas in the hot summers of Texas. They have those umbrellas because they would not dream of getting any darker; or to them, any uglier.

It wasn’t until the video touched on the recreated study by Kenneth Clark that I felt so sad that I about burst into tears. It absolutely broke my heart when I saw those children pick white doll after white doll, but nothing was worse than when the little black girl had to say which doll was bad and then show that doll was what she looked like. It made me want to jump in the screen and hold her in my arms, as if to shield her from the world, and tell her that she wasn’t bad and that she was beautiful. I would love to see why they think the black doll is bad though. Did they truly understand the word? Did they think the doll looked bad not that it was actually a bad, aka evil, doll?

In the end of the video the girls talked about how they felt they have a culture and don’t really know where they come from. I know how they feel in a sense. I know a part of me is American Indian and I know my culture up until my grandfather. But the ways of my past have been lost and greatly diminished since the Trail of Tears and since my family switched to Christianity and dismissed the ways of our people. I can related to these girls feeling that they feel like something is missing because I feel the same. I feel like I truly don’t know who I am, especially since I have no idea what my mother is.

All in all this was a great video and I surprisingly related to it maybe more than anyone else in that class who wasn’t already black. But I hope others took the video more seriously and had it open their eyes more because it’s a shame if they walked away just as ignorant as when they came in.