I’m never one to go around voicing my opinion, especially on social media and especially on Tumblr. But for some reason, this really struck a chord with me.
The top five girls for Miss Teen USA 2016 were not only all white girls, but they were all blonde, and they were all blue-eyed.
I’m not going to sit here and deny the fact that they’re beautiful -- because they’re all very beautiful. And I bet they all have wonderful personality traits about them (well, I’ve heard the winner has used some very derogatory words on her Twitter but y’know...yeah.)
But I was fortunate enough to be raised in, while I will admit is a very wealthy county, a diverse city considering the surrounding towns. However, that doesn’t devalue the fact that I always had this internal struggle that I believed I was not beautiful.
I have tan skin, dark brown eyes, and dark brown curly hair. I grew up thinking all the time, If only my skin were lighter, if only my features were lighter, I could dye my hair blonde, I could get that Brazilian treatment done to make my hair permanently straight, my eyes are so dull, so dark, there is nothing interesting to them. I am not interesting.
I grew up thinking I wasn’t beautiful mainly because I wasn’t the textbook definition of white. And I am mainly made up of European background; I am 75% made up of Italian, German, Hungarian, and Romanian blood; but the other 25% is Filipino, and while I am extremely proud of my heritage and always so proud to say that, growing up as a young girl who is going to compare herself to the girl next to her, it was challenging to be proud. It was challenging to be seen as a person of color.
Why couldn’t I be proud that this smaller percentage of Asian background was beaming through? Why couldn’t I be happy with the looks I was born into?
When I saw the announcement for the top five in this pageant, all I could think about was myself: this little girl, sitting on the floor, looking in her mirror and staring at herself thinking she wasn’t beautiful, she wasn’t attractive to other people, to other guys, to herself.
My brother, with the same tan (if not darker) skin, was born with glowing, cat green eyes. Everywhere we went growing up, he was complimented left and right from random strangers about his beautiful eyes; and again, I will never deny them. They are. It’s insane and I’m jealous of them to this day because the rest of our immediate family has brown eyes. But how is a ten year old girl to feel when the waitress of Ruby Tuesday’s can’t even take our order because she’s too distracted by your brother’s green eyes? (Side note, we have not been to a Ruby Tuesday’s since. My family picks on me about it to this day. I’m twenty years old.)
Even as a college student it was almost impossible to find me going out or going to a special event with my natural hair. I even experimented as a freshman how many people came up to talk to me with my natural hair and when my hair was straight; just like I expected, I was barely even looked at with my natural, messy, curly hair.
Maybe it’s the Tallahassee humidity that’s keeping me from straightening my hair when I go out, or even straightening it to curl it again, but in a way I’m so thankful for it. I’m beginning to really love my curls, even when I get dolled up. This past summer, for the first time, felt comfortable leaving my room in a dress, in wedges, and with my natural hair.
My mom and my dad have been my rocks throughout my life. My dad would always tell me that I had the song Brown Eyed Girl while girls with blue eyes or green eyes didn’t have that. My mom (with the Filipino heritage) made me fall in love with how beautiful the culture is and how wonderful and powerful it means to be a person, a woman of color.
And so, while we sit here and watch five blonde haired, blue eyed girls take the stage and claim a title that is paired almost synonymously with beauty, in a world that has paired that look with that word for decades and decades, it’s so important to remember that color is okay. No, it’s more than okay, it’s perfect. It’s beautiful! Color is beautiful. your natural look is beautiful, and no one, not even Miss Teen USA can say otherwise.
It took me many years to self love. I just hope it doesn’t take today’s youth to do the same.
i feel like i can’t go anywhere anymore without people soothsaying my downfall. even the cashier at taco bell was all “the flock of crows taken to following you portent a disastrous and blah blah fucking blah,” i get it, i’m about to undergo a storm of tribulation, what frickin ever
