I’ve been wanting to talk about being a single, dark-skinned girl for awhile now, but I struggled to organize my thoughts on the topic and pinpoint what exactly I had to say about it. It’s also a vulnerable topic for me, and I wasn’t sure I was ready to publicly engage this subject, even though I’ve skimmed the surface a bit in my recent content.
But my top core value is courage, so I understand that even though I might have butterflies in my stomach at the thought of discussing this topic, I have to honor that inner pull to speak about it. It’s as if this subject has been tugging at me, and the more I try to delay, the more insistent the tugging gets.
So this week, I’m simply going to start. I’m not putting any pressure on myself to have some kind of manifesto or profound takeaways. I’ll simply start the conversation. And where I want to start is by reflecting on my girlhood and young adulthood.
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Conditioned to Pine for Romance
Every single movie and TV show, even those made for kids, either has romantic love as the central plot or a subplot. And it’s not just the inclusion of romance in the story, it’s the pining for romance in these stories that trains us from early ages to understand romance as not simply one of many everyday human experiences, but rather as the Holy Grail of human existence.
I do find that books or novels are less likely to have such a heavy focus on romantic relationships, but it’s frequently in books too.
And when we listen to music, there’s even more obsession with romantic love, or the absence of it, or the loss of it, or the longing for it. The themes are always the same: so lonely without someone to love, so lost without you, I can’t live without your love, my life began when I met you…
What would happen if we started paying attention to other experiences? Other kinds of relationships? Especially the one with ourselves?
But colorism results in a difficult tension when none of the people in these love stories look like you! In many cases, not only is the principle love interest light, mixed, white, non-Black, etc. she’s also pitted against another character, an antagonist, who does look like you. When you do see a character who resembles you, she’s often portrayed as undesirable or as the outright enemy.
In those rare times where I a girl or woman who looked like me could be the center of the love story, I clung to that representation, dearly, and cherished it.
The Most Potent Social Validation
Oh, but it’s not just the media that we get it from! It’s definitely emphasized by the people all around us, young and old, no matter their gender, their relationship status, or their relationship to us.
I can’t even think of where to begin providing examples of the things people say and do to reinforce this, but here are a few you might recognize:
- So when are you gonna get married?
- Don’t you think it’s bout time to cut the cake?
- You need a man! This is usually said as a rebuke because you show up or speak up in a way that the other party disapproves of.
- I got a man! This is typically said as proof that you’re good, okay, happy, valid, worthy, better, etc.
- Men don’t want a woman with/who/that… [anything not sanctioned by the patriarchy].
- That’s why you’ll always be… single, never get married, never find a man, always be along, etc. And it’s said as if this would be the most horrible punishment for not being good enough, and it’s also said as a rebuke or curse because you show up or speak up in a way that the other party disapproves of.
- The prevalence of “singles groups” that are solely focused on how to not be single rather than how to be single or living your best life as a single person.
- She just mad cus she… single, don’t have a man, nobody wants her, etc. Very often used to discredit women like me who speak up about colorism. Here I must emphasize the importance of not playing into this, not validating this harmful criticism by offering that you are in fact in a relationship as proof to legitimize your arguments against colorism. I actually heard a very popular YouTuber say she hasn’t been speaking out about colorism as much because she has a man now… That’s extremely problematic and harmful and counterproductive to all of us who work so hard to educate people about the gravity of this issue.
The Influence of Colorism on Being a Single, Dark-Skinned Girl
So, this patriarchal obsession with romantic partnerships and marriage is definitely layered and entangled with colorism. It’s established long before girls are even of dating age, which ones will be most valued on the dating and marriage market, and which ones would need to prepare themselves to be single or work hard to compensate for what they lack in desirability.
I’ve spoken about how my mother told me a story about my sister and me as young girls, around 7 and 5 respectively. Older women were saying how my sister was gonna “break some hearts one day,” and my mom heard me say to myself: That’s cus she’s light skin. Even at age 5 I understood the role that colorism played in desirability politics. The conversation these women were having about my older sister was just one of many instances reinforcing that game.
I mentioned earlier the severe misrepresentation or simply the lack of representation of dark-skinned girls and women in love stories.
There’s also the subtle and the direct messages passed on between generations within families about who to marry and who to avoid marrying or partnering with at all costs. And again, these messages are taught even to children before they’re even thinking about dating: Because you’re so dark, you must not marry a Black man, otherwise your children will definitely come out dark.
And then of course there’s the direct insults and rejection among children and young adults themselves, explicitly saying how they refuse to “date dark” or explicitly “prefer light/mixed/Latina” etc.
Part of my personal experience also entails a common pattern I see for other dark-skinned girls too, Erica Campbell’s daughter for example, is seeing our own fathers and other men in our family prefer light or non-Black women.
For me, I definitely internalized the colorism when it came to dating. I mentioned this during a previous live stream, and some people got flustered. But it’s true. From my perspective, after all I’d observed and experienced, I had no reason to think anyone would date me…
And yet… For some reason I thought it would just happen, as naturally as puberty, that my someone, somewhere, someday would come…
I stopped waiting.
I stopped looking.
I stopped expecting.
I stopped hoping.
Reflection:
What have you been taught, directly or indirectly, about romance, relationships, etc.? How much of it feels good or authentic to you now?
Affirmation:
I am enough by myself.