This is the first time I have ever publicly spoken about this issue. I think what prompted me to write this was my most recent experience on Halloween. I found myself struggling to find a Halloween costume, and I think part of the struggle IS being a brown girl. I have now grown to love the holiday, however, all my life I dreaded finding a costume. When I was younger, there was this one year everyone wanted to dress up as Hannah Montana for Halloween. I ended up dressing up as her for Halloween that year too. It hurt that I was teased for not looking like her because I wasn’t white and I didn’t have blonde hair. But now looking back, I really don’t care. I’m just glad I’m not friends with any of those weirdos now.
I have accepted that I need to work harder and be ten times more creative when it comes to choosing my Halloween costume. I mean I can always choose a basic Halloween costume (ie. an angel, a witch, a pirate, etc.), but I enjoy dressing up as characters from TV shows/movies. When I asked for suggestions, I can’t even tell you the number of times I was told to dress up as Princess Jasmine. Don’t get me wrong, I love Princess Jasmine, but it’s beyond annoying that she is the first suggestion I hear from anyone. I also feel that I will look ridiculous dressing up as most of the other Disney princesses because I am not white or blonde. A lot of people say that I am exaggerating, but I’m just expressing my struggle. I’m annoyed too. Annoyed that I have this disadvantage, where I feel like I must work harder than most girls on Halloween or in any other situation for that matter.
To be clear, I’m not hating on other girls, I’m simply sharing my experiences, while also bringing awareness to ignorance in our society. I have never felt that I had a safe space to speak about this and I have always felt I needed to be quiet about, therefore my feelings have been hidden for a long time.
A lot of my girl friends have been sweet, kind and supportive of me. Unfortunately, there have been at least a handful of girls who made me feel worthless for being brown-skinned. Whether they realized it or not. I think it’s why I use to be an overachiever. I wanted to impress and please people all the time, to overcompensate for my skin colour.
My mom used to tell me “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent”, but honestly it was so hard to hang onto her words. The truth is that I had to work hard at blocking condescending comments, even up until today. Comments from girls such as “You’re pretty for a brown girl”, “I can’t take pictures with you, I’ll look too pale next to you” or “No, you can’t use my hair-tie, you’ll break it” and “We don’t have a darker bronzer for you, Sabrina”. What also hurt were comments from boys such as “I’m only interested in white girls”. What does it even mean? What year are we in? I constantly felt excluded, and I was too embarrassed to talk to my parents about it.
In high school, I took a communication technology course, where we were assigned this project to photoshop our faces into an existing movie poster. I remember the entire assignment being so stressful for me because I couldn’t find a poster I wanted. I was the only brown girl in the class, so everyone (including the teacher) teased me about my only option being a Bollywood film poster. I don’t watch Bollywood films and there is nothing wrong with them- but I was singled out at that moment and made to feel embarrassed.. I’ll never forget it. The key here is ignorance. Really, why is that something to be teased about? I was also upset with the fact that I had limited options, while the other girls got to choose from a wide range of American posters.
On that note, let’s talk about the representation of brown girls in American TV shows/movies. Do people understand how sad it is to be misrepresented or have a lack of representation in the media? I recently had a conversation with my friend about this, where I challenged her to find an American TV show/movie with a brown-skinned girl in the leading role. At first, she argued that there were plenty but came to the realization that there was only a handful amount. She could only find Bend it Like Beckham (2002), The Mindy Project (2012) and Never Have I Ever (2020). CeCe from New Girl (2011) doesn’t count since she is a supporting character. Eurocentric beauty standards cast women of colour to the periphery, causing young girls to hyper-fixate on minimizing their ethnic features. I’ve been guilty of using makeup to make my nose look slimmer, thinning out my thick hair and making my skin tone look lighter. This standard has been and continues to be defined with white women in mind, where women of colour are not included in these ideas of beauty. It’s the reason why brown girls tend to not be casted in American TV shows/movies.
A more recent experience was when I went to Sephora with my sister. I had asked one of the Beauty Advisors for help finding a shade of concealer. Obviously, because of COVID precautions, she couldn’t test the concealers directly on my face, but I was curious about the new Rare concealers by Selena Gomez. Instead, I just used my ring finger to test the shades. She clearly didn’t know what she was doing because she went back and forth at least seven times. Every time she came back, she looked frustrated and annoyed. Even though I found a shade I liked, she made comments like “Yikes! No, you’re way too dark for that one!” and finally said “I don’t think Rare is the brand for you. You should try a different one…”, then proceeded to whisper and scoff with her colleague. While her comments may not sound rude to some, it was her tone and demeanour that gave me an off feeling. Thank God that my sister was there with me because she doesn’t tolerate that kind of behaviour and she knows that I freeze in uncomfortable situations, often letting others speak to me like that. The woman didn’t even help me find a different concealer in a different brand. My sister just pulled me right out of there because we both wanted to leave.
What really bothers me is the fact that people think they can talk down to me. Seriously, who do they think they are? It honestly stresses me out, to the point that I’ve become anxious when I encounter a group of girls where I’m the minority. It’s not me being insecure, I just hate the feeling of being spoken down to like that. These girls may even be the sweetest people in the world, but it takes time for me to trust people after these experiences. I have to trust that they are going to accept my differences and treat me as an equal.
After a lot of reflection, I have learned to not accept or tolerate this behaviour from anyone. If I pick up on the slightest of bad intentions or someone is speaking to me in a condescending tone because of my skin colour/race, I immediately detach myself from that person. I don’t need that negative energy in my life. I’ve already had to cut or create boundaries with people in my life because of this, even in university. The point of this article is not to pity me, I just needed an outlet to finally voice my concern around this experience that women of colour, like me, face most days. I want brown girls, like me, or any other woman of colour to feel that they are not alone.
The message here is about acceptance and awareness of ignorance. I would hope that after reading this, you would become more aware and want to teach your kids about kindness towards others, so they understand how easily words can tear apart confidence. A conversation about this could have benefited my high school teacher, the people I went to school with or that girl who worked at Sephora when they were growing up. Their comments don’t need to be haunting young girls of colour throughout their adulthood. We need to practice accepting each other’s differences and not let our differences define who we are.
And to the women in the POC community; you deserve the best from all your relationships. Remember that your success relies on yourself, because a lot of people may not want to see you succeed, but you need to stay strong and use this as motivation to achieve anything you set your mind to.