Thahabu

Light, but not mixed race, which means light skinned but not “beautiful.” My twist outs never come out right, my hair is nappy. I’m light skinned, but don’t quite resemble Tracee Ellis Ross. “You’re brave, I would never wear my hair like that,” fellow black girls say to me.

I’m still learning to accept that I’ll never look like Zendaya or Zoë Kravitz. I’ve always been jealous of mixed girls with loose curls and faces that scream, my parents achieved the perfect ethnic mix to make the perfect human being! I want to be them: interesting and pretty, not confusing and nappy. Saying I’m black and only black disappoints people vying to hear me sing, “I’m Danish, Japanese, and black,” like a popular MJ lyric. “I’m just black,” doesn’t cut it.

I remember being at a high school party and having this boy flirt with me. It was going well until he completely flipped the conversation, “I bet your pussy so pink.” I replied that it wasn’t, perturbed and unaware that at 15 people have preferences for the color of a girl’s vulva. He paused and stared at me with a mix of bewilderment and slight disgust, “Oh yea, you probably not mixed, I can tell from your hair.” Of course I was offended and told him off, but it was in that instant that I started to feel like a glitch, when I noticed that I may be light skinned and reap all the privileges of my light complexion, but I’d never meet the Light-Skinned Girl beauty standard. I contradict the idea that having light skin means you have long soft curls and a non-black parent, and that seems to upset people.

This aspect of my life has had a huge effect on my self esteem. Every day I battle with telling myself that I’m worthy of love. I’m attempting to come to terms with not being blessed with the “perfect” genetic makeup. I’ll never be enough, not mixed enough, not tall enough, definitely not thick enough. I’m not sure if I’ll ever be OK with that; being shaped like Thandie Newton but shorter with a slightly bigger butt, and having awkward big lips that make me look like a fish. Never beautiful, but always “cute.”

Many of my biracial friends struggle with not looking “black enough,” while I grapple with not looking “ambiguous enough.” As a non-mixed, light-skinned girl I’m viewed as coming up short. I could almost pass for an Ideal Mixed Girl, but there’s always that one person who makes a comment about the texture of my hair or the roundness of my nose and I’m a have-not or just “aight” once again. I’m in this strange purgatory on the color scale, and I don’t like it. I’m still chasing after an idea of perfection, and frankly, it’s tiring. I’ll have to stop and look in the mirror one day. I’m just not sure if I’m ready for it. ♦