The Video that Changed My View of Skin Color Forever
A number of years ago I watched a video that showed how the sun viewed human skin. It was a commercial about the importance of wearing sunscreen. But that’s not what I got out of the video.
Most of the people who stood in front of the suns’s eyes camera were fair skinned white people. You could see the damage the sun did to their skin. As a light-skinned Black person I know I would have looked about the same.
There were two dark-skinned Black women in the video.
When the white people put on sunscreen and stood in front of that camera, the sunscreen covered portions of their skin looked like the Black woman’s skin, without sunscreen.
I came to the realization that Black skin was made for the sun. Made to protect people from the sun.
Until this point in my life, I felt bad for people who had dark skin. White society demonized dark skin and I was grateful for the benefits and privilege I had for being lighter skinned. As I kid and teen, I wished my skin was lighter like my mom’s I wanted to get as close to whiteness as I could.
But this video changed everything. This video made me see that the world is wrong. I knew the world was wrong for being colorist, but I had internalized it so deeply that I sought to seek more benefits from it rather than dismantle the system.
We are idolizing the wrong type of beauty.
See the original video below:
How do you know that Black is beautiful?
