Today's post is a bit of a personal one for me because I don't condone bullying of any kind, especially in children. Instead of my usual wedding inspiration, I've put together an inspiration board of a different kind, but before I get to that, I wanted to get into the why.... Last week, at a summer camp, there was a beautiful little girl crying because the children at the camp were picking on her. They were picking on her because her skin was too dark. I was beyond infuriated! One, I was picked on by my own classmates for similar reasons when I was a child. I was too dark, too skinny, and never had the best clothes. Two, many of the students at the camp are of the African American race, so this reasoning just didn't make any sense to me. I was just sick and tired of the African American race picking on each other, especially after just recently watching Oprah's documentary Dark Girls. My mom used to say "it doesn't matter if you're black, white, blue, green, or yellow, people are just people". I still believe this and I raised my children to believe the same.
I happen to have the latest copy of Munaluchi Bridal magazine, which shows women in all shades of brown getting married, walking the runways in fashion shows, and around the globe being depicted in positive ways. I chatted with her for a bit so that she could hear how beautiful she really was. I told her that it's not about having light skin, white skin, long hair, or short hair; it's about being who you are and loving who you are. We all have something special within us and underneath it all, we all bleed the same color, red.
Today's inspiration board was put together so little girls like the one I encountered last week and like the one that I used to be, can see that beauty comes in so many different shades; from pale white to dark chocolate and everything in between, and have not a single flaw. I'm not oblivious to the fact that beauty is depicted one way on tv and in other forms of the media, but our young girls need to know that what they see when they look in the mirror is more than just ok. So, I thought I'd start off by telling them with this post. You are beautiful!