Logan Smith

Meet Logan. She is an independent, honest and brave young woman. As a Jehovah's Witness, she leads her life with a strong sense of self and love for God. She is an avid reader, often staying up late to read another chapter of her latest book. She will also go out of her way to support anyone who needs a helping hand. Even with so much going right in her life, ideas of beauty and lack of conversation about the issues of colorism do affect her. This is Logan’s story.

What I See

I grew up attending a school with mainly white students. Considering that the people on advertisements and also the people that surrounded me all had lighter skin than me, it was so natural for me to think that white or lighter skin equaled beauty. It’s all I saw, which made it hard to imagine my skin tone as beautiful. Many times I felt the need to be white to feel beautiful, like the other girls I was friends with. On the other hand, with my family, we didn’t really talk or focus on race. So I never really had that conversation with them.

Hairstyles

I think it is interesting that even when we look things up on google or any other search engine, there are more images that focus on white or light skinned people. I was recently looking up hairstyles for an event and that appears is a screen full of white people hairstyles. I had to narrow down the search by typing in hairstyles for black people. I think that says a lot about how the media focuses on lighter skin people and kind of sidelines people of color. With such a lack of representation, it isn’t hard to see why people of color have a difficult time learning to love their skin color.

Skin Lightening

People lighten their skin because of the mindset that society has given. People are stuck in the idea that they need to be light skinned to be pretty, accepted or happy. So much so that they feel like they have no other choice. They are forced into believing this wrong idea. I would tell them that you don’t need to lighten your skin to be beautiful. You are absolutely perfect the way you are.

Me Today

I have come to realize that just because I am dark skin it doesn’t mean that I am less beautiful, but I am beautiful in my own way. I like my skin color and what it means to me. As a black person, race will always have a significance in my life because it is a limiting factor in this society but I will not allow my skin color to stop me from pursuing any dream that I have.

I Wish

I wish there was a way to incorporate self love in an family environment. I never really had that conversation with my parents because I think that my parents haven’t really thought too much about it or how much it affects our lives. My parents have always told me to love myself, but if they would have focused on skin color, I may have been a different person today. Some parents don’t know how to encourage self love, or even know that their children are insecure, so I wish there was a class for parents to attend where they learn how to encourage their children.

Dear Little Logan

Don’t let anyone take away your confidence. That belongs to you. Always has and always will.