Black Girl, You are Beautiful

My 3 year old daughter Poppy has so many toys: stuffed animals, superheroes, teddy bears, dinosaurs, cars and the dolls, oh my goodness. We have enough dolls for all of the kids in the neighbourhood. One thing I always encourage is my daughter playing with coloured dolls.

When I was a child my favourite doll was a gorgeous black baby doll with frizzy black hair. She was one of a kind. Almost 30 years later now and she is still in good condition, she is the doll standing tallest in the photo above.

It is so important to teach our children while they are young what beauty is. With technology advancing at a rapid rate to reach our younger generations sooner than ever before, the world can start teaching our children before we do if we’re not careful. These kids know how to access apps, how to avoid calls, how to manipulate the sound and picture and they know characters ins and outs.

So before she starts comparing herself to certain Youtube stars or ABC characters, I am teaching my daughter Poppy how beautiful her thick curly brown hair is, and how gorgeous her big brown eyes are. She loves her body and tells everyone how beautiful she is. Poppy is my beautiful black doll.

Poppy has a handful of Barbie dolls that were all bought at the same time and the white skinned Barbie’s all have beautiful bright dresses with colourful patterns, flowers, cupcakes and unicorns etc. on their clothes. The one black doll she got out of those however wears a dull black dress with mice on it, MICE for crying out loud! I couldn’t believe it. Poppy loves all of her dolls but to me it looks as if this particular doll's clothes were made from a scrap material pile. It was very disappointing to say the least.

I wish black dolls were advertised to be as beautiful as other dolls but truthfully speaking they are not.

When Black dolls are marketed they are made from a stereotype. They're sold as an authentic 'cultural' piece by slapping some paint on it, giving it a tribal costume and sticking some feathers in it’s hair. At other times I've seen the fashionista black dolls with a stereotypical 'angry black girl' face. While the other light skinned Barbie's have a beautiful smile the dark one's appear to have an attitude problem.

Poppy has so many dark skinned baby dolls and what’s surprising is when other kids visit, those dolls are the last ones the other kids choose. That is, if they choose to play with them at all, and they hardly ever do. They don’t see the beauty in them, they think these dolls are ugly. I wish for them as I did for myself that I had more black dolls growing up and that I had seen more in the shop windows.

It may just come down to the fact that we live in rural Australia and perhaps beautiful black dolls are available in other parts of the world or even this country that we're missing out on. But speaking specifically for where we live, there is no representation for Beautiful Black Women.

Being a Black person with White skin has been one of the hardest things I have had to face in my life. People like myself are constantly scrutinized because of the difference in our culture and our skin tone. Others think being a few too many shades lighter than the ‘token’ black person makes us less authentic than one ourselves.

We live in modern day Australia and yet people of colour are still asked 'where we come from' and this is literally our country, where we were born and raised.

We live in a world where people say things like “she’s pretty for a black girl.” “You’re not like the rest of them.” Or, “You're too pretty to be an aboriginal!”

This IS NOT OKAY!

Passing off that the stereotype for black people is that we’re not beautiful and that our darker toned brothers and sisters are ugly IS NOT OKAY!

I could never fully appreciate the way I looked as a kid. I didn’t look like my Barbie dolls. Yeah, I had the same green and blue eyes as they did but my hair was so big, so dark and frizzy. My figure was always much curvier and my nose, so wide, there was no way a Barbie would ever have these features. Even my Baby Born doll was white with blue eyes with no hair and that was what was classed as ‘Beautiful’?

Why did I look like this?

I struggled for many years trying to fit the criteria of what the world said is beautiful because it had now warped my perception of beauty. It wasn’t me. It wasn’t the dark skin tones, curly black hair and wide noses around me that I had grown up with. All of a sudden I was thinking hang on, they're not beautiful either because they don't look like my Barbie's! What a lost child I was growing up with such an identity crisis because I just wanted to look like a Barbie Doll. I wanted an itty bitty waist, long straight blonde hair and a tiny nose.

My family just rolled their eyes each time I told them I was going to get a nose job. But I always met with them fighting me on the fact that our noses are a trademark and a symbol of our identity. I was constantly dying my hair blonde and straightening it. Ruining my gorgeous natural features to fit the profile.

My poor black curly mane. My identity was suffering all for the sake of me wanting to be someone else's version of beautiful.

Let me say, I always felt beautiful in myself, I never felt ugly. I just felt I never met the criteria of what textbook beauty was meant to be.

I am happy to say that at 3 years old this colour problem does not affect my daughter. Proudly my girl chooses her dark skinned dolls to play with and even out in the world she chooses to be kind to everyone of all different colours. She does not ignore someone based on the colour of their skin and most importantly my daughter is not afraid of someone based on the colour of their skin. This is one of the most important points. If you've grown up with people who have taught their kids to be afraid of certain people based on their skin then you'll know exactly what I mean. Poppy sees the beauty in all people and treats everyone with kindness no matter what their size or colour and I know my job as her mum is done.

So why did I feel like this? Why did I look like this?

Growing up, everywhere I looked, in the shops and in catalogues, tall, skinny, narrow nosed, blue eyed dolls with straight blonde hair and tiny waists were the focus of sales. This created a huge image problem.

I never truly appreciated the way I looked until I was well into my 20’s. Knowing what a strain this put on my ability to love myself the way I was, I never wanted this for my daughter. Don't allow decades of your life to pass you by without realising how wonderful you are. Spend these years appreciating every bit of beautiful that you are. No need to filter and edit, snip and straighten, because God made you perfectly the first time.

Sometimes it isn't enough that our friends and our family tell us we are beautiful. Nothing we are told matters unless we truly believe it in ourselves first. So believe me when I say Black Girl You Are Beautiful!

We, all the shades of black, dark, light, medium and everything in between, every one of us are Beautiful.