Diary of an Ambivalent Black Girl: Log Date 06/24/20
By Chika Ojukwu
Collage by Chika Ojukwu
When I was a little girl, my idol was Hannah Montana.
She was the girl I wanted to be.
She was clever, charismatic, could sing, and was the most popular star in the world.
She was adored by all.
Me, wide eyed and naive, saw this blond haired and blue eyed girl, and believed that I was supposed to be blonde haired and blue eyed in order to be liked by others--in order to be a star.
I'd look down at myself, see what I looked like, see things like my dark black skin, the dark lines that were embedded on my palms, the round, bulbous shape of my nose and become disgusted.
I was not white. I was not thin. And therefore, I was not beautiful.
It was because of my black skin that I was not rich nor popular. It was because of my coarse curly hair that no boy liked me. Whenever I looked at the mirror, I hated what I saw. And because of this, I began to look away from the mirror and towards the screen.
But when I looked, the images that surrounded me perpetuated this belief that the Hannah Montana-esque girl was the standard of beauty.
Media I adored featured girls who were fair and blonde. Chloe from The Bratz TV show was my favorite character. All the dolls I had had the same long legs, blond hair, and blue eyes. My favorite Disney movie, Tangled, starred the blonde and beautiful Rapunzel.
The fact was, there was no girl who looked like me who was the star of her own world.
And so it was.
There is no moral ending to this story where the world wised up and began showing girls who looked like me, who were the lead of their own tv shows. When there was a black girl, she was light skinned and had straight hair--had an identity that could be easily digested by the masses.
No, the world did not change. Not even a little bit.
But I did. My views did. The way I saw myself-curves, dark skin and all-did.
I stopped trying to look towards others who looked a certain way, and looked towards myself, towards the beauty that I held inside.
And it wasn’t through some self - help book that I did this. It was through years of introspection, failures and shortcomings, and ultimately, time spent wiggling around in my own skin, and opening my eyes to its beauty.
Some days, my self esteem is lower than usual, but there is no longer that deep hatred that I held towards myself when I was younger and would dream of waking up white.