When asked to think about my experience with color or what some would assume is a lack thereof, I am immediately protective. I find that too often there is more division between brown girls than anything else.  As a fair skinned African-American woman, I still identify myself as being brown.

Growing up, I was lighter than my immediate family. My father is a deep brown and my mother has an olive brown skin and my brother shared her complexion.  And I have tons of family that spans the spectrum. It’s difficult when you come from a family of brown people not to consider yourself brown. My color was never an issue. I was never treated any differently in my family because of skin color. We were all just who we were. The importance of education and being a good person were at the crux of our upbringing.

I found that more attention was brought to my color on the outside of my home than anything. It seemed like it mattered more to other girls that I was light than it mattered to me. I can remember always being pegged “stuck up” or “she think she cute,” when that was the farthest thing from how I felt about myself. I was super intelligent with glasses and I was always scrawny. So my reflection to me was different than what they saw.

The most beautiful thing about black people is that we come in so many shades. My best friend for years had dark brown skin that anyone would envy. Her whole family was a dark mocha and some of the most gorgeous people I ever met on the inside and out. We are the color of chestnuts, butterscotch, pecans, chocolate, coffee, toffee; whatever you can think of. There’s pride in all those shades of brown.  

Whether you are light, dark, or green, there are commonalities in our experience. If we continue to focus on the differences, that will be all we see. People still ask me things like “how I get my hair this way,” (I am natural) and expect me to be the voice for all black people in a room full of white faces. It’s sad that sometimes we can’t see that we are all in this together.

I love who I am and never at the expense of my darker sisters but in unison and conjunction with them. Knowing that you are enough will put you in a place where you would never want to put down your fellow “brown girl.” Being brown is my family, it’s my history, and no one will take that away from me because my skin has hints of yellow.

As I age, I am more confident in who I am now than I ever have been. I would encourage other women to learn how to let go of past hurts and realize that the key to their beauty has always really been within. No matter what the media, men, or school administrations say about us,  we are held in high favor and high regard by God.

 Be Bold, be Brown and be beautiful on the inside and out!

|Guest Post by Ashley Coleman of http://writelaughdream.com/|

As an aspiring black/brown-skinned model,  I have come across tons of discrimination. I’ve been told I was too dark, that  I have African features (big nose, big lips, big butt) so I wasn’t fit to be a model by couple of agencies. Insecurities started hitting me- I didn’t feel beautiful- I was told I wasn’t because I’m too dark. I totally gave up on modeling. But then my mom talked to me and said : “Don’t let nobody/anybody stop you from dreaming and making it reality”. That still didn’t hit me until my son told me “Mom,you’re a beautiful dark-skinned girl and you have a good heart”. Those words touched me and ever since then, I have embraced my race and my complexion. I love the skin that I am in. My goal is to become a working model, not necessarily a famous one, although it wouldn’t hurt if I gained notoriety in that process. I want to become a working model because I have the passion, drive and I know that I’m a great one.  I will keep pushing myself to reach where I wanna be. - Una Momolu | darkskin-longlegs.tumblr.com

Being a coloured girl in fashion is well, interesting to say the least. Don’t get me wrong, I love my job - and like any other job it has it’s ups and downs, but being coloured only marginalizes you even further than gender or weight or height. For example, as a brown girl, I pretty much need to accept that it’s highly unlikely I will ever travel to Asian countries like China or Japan for work, since they tend to favour blond haired blue eyed white girls.

On the bright side, as a coloured girl you know from the get go that you stand out, as I would say 70% of models are white. BUT you are also probably less likely (in some respects) to get as much work as any of those other models. I remember looking at an agency’s website in Germany and seeing ONE coloured girl, my mind was blown. Unfortunately, fashion is just that type of industry - but it’s slowly changing.

Moving to London to model has really opened my eyes and broadened my perspective though. It’s so multicultural here and so many brands use all different coloured models for their ads, campaigns, e-commerce etc. As a brown girl, I just need to remember that it’s not always your “skin colour” but perhaps your “look” that determines whether or not you get a job. Like any other job, at the end of the day, you just need to be the best you can be and break down racial stereotypes and stigmas.

My goal as a coloured model is to demonstrate that we can be just as successful, and do the same job as a white model, to the same standard. Modeling is not a career that lasts forever, it’s the kind of job that you make the most of while you can, and this is my chance to make something of it. At the very least, I want a little brown girl looking at a magazine to see HER OWN colour represented on the pages, and not a colour she’s supposed to see as superior, or beautiful, but understand that HER colour is beautiful too.- Shivani Persad main blog: glassesnlashes.blogspot.ca | liveshiv.tumblr.com