Learning to Love My Fair Skin

It could be a line straight out of Mean Girls. It’s the question I commonly get upon telling others that I’m from Southern California (of which there are many variations):

“Oh, you’re from San Diego? Then why are you so white?”

To which my response used to be an awkward laugh and a timid “Yeah, I don’t know!”

But I do know. I know why my skin burns after being in the sun for just 10 minutes, and why I have hundreds of freckles on my body. I know why it’s hard to find makeup that isn’t going to be excessively orange, and I know why I can clearly see the veins that run throughout my body. Because I’m fair skinned. That’s all. I just AM.

I’m pale because my mom is pale, because her mom was pale, and her mom before her, too. It’s genetics, and as far as I know you can’t change those. I have come to appreciate and feel comfortable in the skin my mother gave me, but I didn’t always feel like that.

Pasty, Ghostly, Albino, Translucent, I’ve been called them all.

These monikers weren’t directed at me in an intentionally insulting way; rather, they were names that were meant to jokingly point out just how light my skin was amidst the sea of golden brown complexions. You start to develop an awareness of what makes you stand out among the crowd at a very young age, and when you’re being called playful, but mildly insulting names that only reinforce the secret insecurities you harbor, it becomes increasingly difficult to love yourself.

Not to mention having grown up in sunny Southern California where “sun, sand and surf” is everyone’s religion, but you are forced to follow the doctrines of “shade, sunhats and SPF” because your melanin is too darn fussy about being outside. SPF 70 does exist, and yes, I have three bottles of it. The sunburns I would get from forgetting/refusing to put on sunscreen as a child were always a great conversation starter. You want what you can’t have, and a tan was just not in the cards for me (and still isn’t).

It wasn’t until my later years in high school that I came to love my “pigment impairment”. It helped that society was gradually adopting the idea of natural, healthy skin no matter the tone. Feeling confident in your own skin is important, but when you feel like your naturally fair skin tone doesn’t fit into society’s standards of pretty, it’s hard to resist the beckoning call of spray tans and sunless tanners.

As society came to embrace its broad spectrum of beautiful skin colors, I began to embrace my natural pigment and feel more comfortable being myself. “Pasty” was now “Porcelain”, and I had to learn that Porcelain is striking no matter what society thinks.

I still don’t understand why it’s acceptable to think one shade of skin color is “prettier” or “sexier” than the others. Putting those down who don’t fit into the mold simply for the feature they literally cannot control is absurd. And unfortunately, I fell victim to thinking I had to fit into that impossibly narrow mold of golden goddess. It was destructive to my self-esteem back then, and I’m still working on repairing the damage. But in reality, my ‘paleness’ was just a pigment of my imagination (pun intended). I was the one that convinced myself I was fairer than I actually was, and neglected a positive self-image all in the name of looking bronzed and stupidly orange. Of course, society’s beauty standards at the time played a little role in my self-esteem degradation, but I was the one that believed the message and didn’t bother to challenge it.

Looking at the present, I am loving my porcelain complexion. My skin is unique to me, and only me. Yes, I’m from San Diego. No, I’m not tan. And that’s okay. I’m fair skinned because I like it, and there are more important things to focus on in life. Don’t sabotage your self-confidence for the sake of beauty standards because in the end, you make your own standards. You do you, boo.

• Fair Skin