If I Don't
By Stephanie Blunt
@jay_and_sparrow
“I’m trying to embrace my curls.”
I shared with a group of my closest girl friends. I continued to explain how my perspective on how I perceive myself has shifted since having two little girls. If I don’t embrace my curls, my skin color, my dark features, then they won’t.
Growing up, my mom always straightened her hair and I was raised in a culture that prizes straight hair, light skin and light eyes. I recall being a little girl and wishing I had blonde hair and blue eyes like the Barbies I played with, like the girls I often saw on TV. I always felt like I came up short. I was never going to be as pretty as the fair girls I saw all around me. In high school I discovered I could adopt those features I longed for, even for a short time. I bought foundation that was three shades lighter, I wore colored contacts, and I straightened my unwelcome curls religiously. When I went outside I avoided the sun like I was a vampire. I would stay in the shade while my friends preferred to tan at the beach and wore 120 SPF sunscreen on my face, although I had never had a sunburn in my life.
I truly believed that the ‘whiter’ I looked, the more beautiful I’d become. I spent money on skin brightening and lightening products, all with the same hope. I look back at those pictures and I cringe, that girl in those pictures really doesn’t look like me, but a much paler, modified and more insecure version of myself.
***
“I don’t want my hair to get wet!” I explained as I darted under a store canopy to put a plastic bag on my head. This was the fifth date that Jonathan, now my husband, and I were on. It was early in the relationship, when first impressions still mattered, but I reasoned that I’d rather be the crazy girl with a bag on her head then the girl with a fro on her head. It was as if the clock had struck twelve and Cinderella had to run before it all faded away. All it takes is a little rain to turn my hair into a lion’s mane.
I remember sitting together outside one day when he started telling me how he admired my dark features. He loved the color of my dark brown eyes and black hair, he loved the color of my dark olive skin—that he had often been attracted to dark features and he found mine to be so beautiful. I had a hard time believing what he was saying, here was this handsome boy with green eyes, straight dirty blonde hair and fair skin, all the features I had desperately wanted, desperately tried to attain—and he found my features most attractive? It dawned on me for the first time: if he loved my natural features, maybe I could love them too.
This continues to be a gradual process of acceptance and love. I felt like I made headway after several years of marriage, but I found myself returning to the same patterns when we had a baby.
“I hope they get your features,” I said to my husband, willing them to have the lighter features I had desired. He laughed and said he hoped they looked like me. When our daughter was born, I was a little heartbroken that the dominant genes won and he got his wish. She was dark skinned, she was dark featured, and she had taken my coloring rather than his. Some of my family members made comments about how they had expected her to be lighter since she had a white father. I don’t think they were trying to be unkind but rather wishing for our daughter the same thing they desired for themselves, a lighter complexion and lighter features.
***
“Look at her curls!” a friendly cashier said as I pushed my daughter in the cart to finish cashing out. ‘
“Thank you,” I said with a smile. I told her how it had been straight the first year of her life but has just begun to curl. I find such joy in my daughter’s newly formed curls, and to this day, I love her curls so much! They’re such a big part of her personality. This year I was struck by the inconsistency: why is it I can love her curls so much and not my own? I realized that she won’t love her curls as much if she never sees me wear mine.
***
My biggest motivation to accept and embrace my features is knowing I have two little girls who are watching. How I talk about my hair, my skin and my body will directly impact how they see theirs. Can I love this body that bears marks of life born? Can I love these crazy out of control curls? Can I love the shade of my skin at the end of the summer as I do at the beginning? Can I learn to love all the unique dark features that point to my ethnicity? Can I use a language of love towards myself so that I can teach my girls to do the same? I’m striving to. I think it’s our role as mothers, especially mothers of daughters. If we never truly believe we are beautiful, as is, will they believe us when we tell them they are?
We need to tell them, they need to know.
***
My younger daughter is still growing her hair and it hasn’t completely decided its orientation, but I hope it’s curly like her sister’s. Most importantly, curly or straight, dark or light, I hope my daughters embrace their beautiful God given features. I hope they recognize that beauty comes in a million shades between black and blonde and that they should never desire to be anything other than the beautiful creation God made them to be. That doesn’t mean they never wear make-up or change up their hairstyle, but that they recognize their value runs so much deeper than that; that their beauty is rooted in who they are and whose they are.
Guest essay written by Stephanie Blunt. Steph is a wife, a mama and a recipient of God’s daily graces, which for her often include a maple latte. She is an artist by trade and is passionate about creating beauty, learning new mediums and encouraging others to see the beauty of the gospel. She is the author of a children’s book called Beau and His New AFO and writes about her own journey through motherhood on her blog. She lives in a small town north of Toronto, Canada and can be found exploring local coffee shops with her husband Jonathan and their ‘latte’ loving girls in tow.
Photo by Enje Daniels.