Skin Color Envy

Yes, I know you are darker than me, you don’t have to put your arm up against mine to prove it.

Growing up I had ‘skin color envy’. It was bad and I let it rule my life, mainly in my teenage years.

If you know me, you know I am white. I don’t necessarily mean ‘white’ as in Caucasian, I mean I am WHITE!

I am so white that I have been compared to Casper the friendly ghost and people have needed to put on sunglasses when I have my legs exposed. 

I am so white that I glow! 

I never realized how white I was until I was in middle school.

I never flinched when a girl or a boy put their arm or their leg up against mine and say in a shocking and amazing voice, ‘WOW! I am really darker than you!’ or they would call me a ghost or any other creative and fun name that I’ve removed from my memory.

My all-time favorite ‘tease’ was in 7th grade from a boy in my Health class.

We were learning about albinos and he raised his hand and asked, ‘Is Aimee an albino?’.

Of course, the class laughed (not the teacher, she was really good at keeping a straight face) and I looked at him w my evil eyes.

Inside, I will admit, it was funny, but I would never let him know that.

Needless to say, Karma wasn’t nice to him. 

With all of the unsolicited criticism, I decided I would try and add some ‘color’ to my skin.

I did the obvious and laid out in the sun which led to a burn, which turned to pink, which added 50 extra freckles to my skin and then turned back to white.

I once heard about a product called Jergens Natural Glow, which helped to add color to your skin so that you would look healthy and not have to lay in the harmful sun.

I was excited!

This was it, I was going to have a normal complexion.

I lathered the Jergens on my arms, my stomach, and my legs. I did not do my face because it warned against it.

A few hours later I looked at my stomach… drum roll… it was ORANGE!

Since I was in high school at the time, I was relieved that I did not have to expose my stomach at school.

At the time my legs and arms looked pretty good. They were actually a nice shade of brown.

I had a tan!  I could not stop looking at my arms and legs. I was over the top ecstatic. I could not wait to go to school the next day.

The next day at school I didn’t say anything about my new discovery. Kids are mean so I didn’t want them to make fun of me about my artificial tan.

No one said anything. Did they not notice, had it rubbed off, why were they not saying anything?

Unfortunately, they were about to notice.

It was ‘A’ day which means it was PE day.

After dressing in our gym clothes, we all proceeded into the bright sunlight to run track.

There it was, the laughter and the giggles behind me.

What was so funny?

I turned around, looked at the backside of my legs, then the front side of my legs, and soon realized that the front of my legs had a decent shade of tan-like brown but the backside of my legs were a tan-like brown w white streaks.

Yes, I was careless and had not lathered it on properly.

What can I say, I was only 13 years old.

Eventually, I stopped having skin color envy. It didn’t happen overnight but it did eventually happen. 

Now that I no longer have skin color envy I can live my life happy being ‘white’.

Yes, I am ‘WHITE’.

YES, my legs GLOW when I go outside, so you’d better put sunglasses on.

YES, I still put on sunblock even though, some would say,  my skin needs some color.

I know that many cultures have the same skin envy issues as I did. I have heard that each culture has its own group of people saying what they think your acceptable skin tone should be.

You are either too dark or too light. If you ask me, it is unnecessary to stress about your skin color. We should learn to love and appreciate the skin color we were born into and appreciate the skin color that others were born into. 

All skin colors are beautiful.