Hey pretty girl club so today I’m going to do my own personal Story Time by the way if you have a story time that you want to discuss on this channel um if you’re an MLs woman if you’re an ABW and you have a story similar to what we talk
About on the exotical storytime series and you want to be heard please email it to exotical united@gmail.com because a lot of people love to tell us that we are delusional that we’re lying some people will try to pretend like we don’t get treated differently on the one hand
People say acknowledge Your Privilege on the other hand people say you have no privilege outside of black men or outside of the male Gaye and so my thing is we can’t all be lying we can’t all be delusional but anyway please email your stories to exotical united@gmail.com and
Let’s go ahead and get into my personal story about how I was introduced to colorism so for starters my background is black white Latin American so on the DNA test it’s black and white but I have about 12% indigenous blood in my uh DNA so if I were to describe my phenotype my
Natural phenotype so like no makeup or anything no hair extensions no hair color it would be more like maybe somebody like Aaliyah or um uh cardi b or Christina milon or uh anywhere from a tan to light brown skin tone and my hair is naturally black and it’s naturally uh
More silky so I’m not going to talk about my textures some experience in this one cuz I I probably would have to make a whole separate video for that one but when I was a kid I was a little bit darker than I am now I don’t know why I
Was so much darker I think it was a combination of not drinking water like ever cuz when I was a kid I used to have eczema like I would have the eczema on my face and stuff like that so I just never drank water I played outside that’s probably what contributed to it
And um I don’t know so when I was a kid I would say my skin tone was going more towards caramel so I wouldn’t consider myself to be like this super high yellow or anything when I was a child um I am not white passing like I said my
Phenotype is more quote unquote light-skinned black or kind of like that black Latin American mixture that’s more of my phenotype my Fenty shade by the way we did a vote on this channel on what we are going to call light skin and it was for editing purposes we voted on
Fenty Shades 390 and above because we noticed that um as soon as you hit around that 390 Mark that is when a lot of you guys have started experiencing being called names like light-skinned or you know you’ve dealt a lot more with people commenting on your features or
Commenting on your hair texture and stuff like that because they do not view you as being the same as unambiguous darker skinned black women um so that is what we voted on this channel for editing purposes my channel is not these are not hard and fast rules okay I’m
Only one person I’m not the boss of the MLS community and I can’t argue with other people’s experiences but from what we have talked about on this channel and from all of the women that ended up like commenting and voting and stuff that is what we are going to be calling
Light-skinned on this channel I know that skin tone and hair texture and race and all that I know that those things are all social constructs so they’re very subjective by the way side note I want to do a video one of these days talking about how carel is the modernday
Paper bag test because did you guys notice how when Chile called herself caramel they basically did like a paper bag test where people were putting pieces of caramel next to Chile’s face in their thumbnails and they were like basically it was it was a paper bag test
And they were trying to say you’re too dark skinn okay anyway that’s a side note but we definitely need to do a video about that because I’ve noticed that for a lot of people caramel is the new paper bag because um people feel like once you are are darker than
Caramel then you are you’re no longer light skinned people start calling you other names like I don’t know brown brown skin or whatever um some people will even try to throw caramel people themselves in and out of being light-skinned but what I’ve noticed is that if you are caramel colored a lot of
People view caramel as being kind of the darkest shade of light skin or they view that as kind of being like paper bag shade or something like that so I’ve noticed that the the color caramel is like a modernday paper bag test that people will use on YouTube thumbnails um
They will try to police people and compare them to a piece of caramel but anyway that’s a whole other rant that I want to do and hopefully some of the other pretty girls who have their own YouTube channels can talk about that as well or maybe they can talk about where
They have fallen on the Spectrum and how they were treated but I was introduced to coloris when I was about 10 years old that was the first time that I ever heard anyone use the word colorism or um talk about lights skin versus dark skin or whatever and the very first person
Who introduced colorism to me was unfortunately an unambiguous dark skinned monoracial black woman so what happened was we were in fourth grade art class and um for the art class we had to clip Up magazines like cut pictures out of magazines and stuff and then put them
On this piece of paper to make a collage side note I went to an africanamerican elementary school so it was a private element school where a lot of people who were like the children of maybe a little bit wealthier African-Americans they would go to this
School so that it was a black school so even though it was private and we wore uniforms and stuff like that it was still a black school so we were cutting out images from like Jet magazine and Essence magazine yes this was back when magazines were a thing and they like
Actually printed the magazines so we were in the art class and then the teacher she started uh talking about all of the women in the magazine and I remember um we were asking her like oh why don’t you be in a magazine like you can be in a magazine we were
Kind of complimenting the teacher and saying like she looks like she could be on a magazine she was very elegant very like in shape she had you know kind of a model look uh the teacher and so she was like oh they would never let anybody my
Complexion be on one of those magazines and then I remember we were just like oh and we all were kind of quiet because we were just kids so we didn’t really understand and then she was like they only let light-skinned people um go on the cover of magazines like Essence and
Jet Magazine they only let people like exotical United’s color go on those magazines they wouldn’t let anybody darker than exotical United’s color be on the cover of one of those magazines and I remember all the kids turning and looking at me I had never uh thought about skin tone or anything like that
And so I never put the two and two together until later on um so but I will say that before that I do remember having certain experiences where I do question if they were calling me out because of my phenotype so for example before that when I was in first grade my
First grade teacher was an unambiguous monoracial dark-skinned black man and I remember um we were all sitting in the first grade classroom and he was like he called out me and two other girls in in the classroom he was like exotical United Kiki and desana those were the
Other two girls who were also quote unquote lightskinn and he was like you guys are going to be trouble when you get older you guys are going to like be pretty when you grow up and at that time I didn’t think anything of it but I do remember noticing that the other girls
Kiki and deaa they both looked like me I do remember that Kiki had a similar complexion to me she also had the long black hair like myself desana had a type four hair she had the blonde afro and she had the lighter skin tone as well so
I do remember that when I was younger I remember that other girls in elementary school in that black Elementary School who looked like me I I do remember people uh commenting on them or complimenting them or saying that they think they’re all that so I remember
There was this one girl and she was about a grade ahead of me and I think her name was like sharesa or something like that so she was about a grade ahead of me she had the same phenotype and she also had the long black hair or whatever
And I remember people saying she thinks she all that and I remember one time when she wore her hair pressed out like she wore it down and straight to elementary school then people were like oh she thinks she’s all that she thinks she’s cute so they were saying very
Similar things to what we talk about here on YouTube and I do remember the boys liking her or whatever as well and she was a grade ahead of me I was not allowed to wear my hair down um when I was younger because I grew up or at that
Time I was going to my dad’s Baptist Church so my dad’s background is he’s obviously an unambiguous monoracial dark-skinned black man his family is from the south you know they have roots in Louisiana and so anyway he went to a we went to a Baptist Church at that time
It was like a southern baptist type of church um so yeah I was not allowed to wear my hair down and curly or anything like that or wear it down and straight because that was considered too grown so I was like banned even though my hair
Was like really long when I was a kid I was not allowed to wear it down so my first experiences with colorism or with kind of upholding colorism they were actually upheld by an unambiguous black woman and an unambiguous black man and to be honest the black woman who was
Talking about colorism the way that she brought it up and introduced it into my life as a child was she was downplaying herself and she literally said anybody her complexion would not be allowed to be on uh any of those magazines or whatever and then she compared comped
Her skin tone to Mine by the way her skin tone was more like uh I don’t want to say Lepa nongo it was more like maybe a little bit brighter than LEP nongo she looked more like Tikka Sumpter so she was very in shape she was very pretty
Like that too long natural hair same type of vibe so she was actually the first one that I remember who explicitly brought up skin tone you know kind of called out my skin tone compared my skin tone to hers and then you know I was singled out in front of the whole class
And I do remember looking around the class at that age and there there really wasn’t anybody else that had my shade in that class there were a couple of boys that were also lighter skin but not I didn’t see any girls just in that particular art class so she was the
First one to directly like bring it up and actually compare me and like call me out in front of the class the black man who talked about us being pretty or whatever he never said because of your skin tone or because of hair textures and because of having long hair but I
Will say I did notice even at that age that myself and those two other girls what we all had in common was a similar complexion and long hair so those were my first experiences with colorism it was actually in the black community um so my next experiences with I guess I
Could call it covert colorism um it was in my family so in my family I actually have plenty of multi-generationally mixed people so like if you go to the cookout at my you know at my family’s uh gett togethers and stuff like that if you look at my extended family they
Marry all kinds of people you know so some of them have babies with unambiguous black men or women some of them have babies with I don’t know white people Asian people whatever so we look like the whole rainbow so I remember I had some older cousins so they were my
Cousins but they were like in their 50s they’re literally like in their 60s now CU that’s how big my family is to where I have cousins that are like older than my mom so I was I don’t want to say I was the favorite but yes I was one of
The favorite baby cousins um because my my aunt I used to call them aunties they would say it they would be like oh exotical United that’s my baby that’s my girl so I do remember that I was the favorite and also my cousin laa she was also the favorite and looking back now
That I’m an adult so I noticed that I had kind of a brighter skin tone I had the longer kind of silkier curly hair and my cousin laa she has a light skin tone as well and she has green eyes and she has a type for she has 4C blonde
Hair so I do remember when I was a child um myself and la la we were both like the older women in the family who were black or black identified they would they would say that we were their favorites and I was aware as a child that they called us their favorites
Because they thought we were cute so they would say it they would tell us that we were cute or whatever so I never tied it to anything like colorism or whatever until I became an adult at that time I was thinking okay both of us are
They say that we’re cute and then both of us live far away from the other family members so maybe that’s why they were saying it like I remember thinking that when I was a kid and a young teenager thinking like oh maybe it’s because they don’t see us as much maybe
That’s why they’re saying we were the favorite cousins so I still I didn’t consider that to be colorism or pedest ization either because they never explicitly named any features or anything like that but I did notice though from the time I was young it did seem like myself or girls that also
Looked like me even if they had maybe a different eye color or maybe a different hair texture they were still called cute and so looking back the only thing I can see that we all had in common was a similar skin tone so that’s why I’m
Putting it in this video and I’m going to I’m calling it you know being introduced to colorism because that’s the only similarity often times they would have type four hair you know they would have the type four blonde hair or the type four Sandy hair sometimes they might have lighter eyes
Sometimes their hair also looked identical to mine kind of the long black hair going down your back so that was I would I would call it a covert potentially covert colorism and then I remember it kind of like Turned bad as I started to develop a little personality
So when I was younger I was one of the cousins who grew up in more of the suburbs you know I went to a private school um my mom would you know she would be a good mom I guess like getting me cute outfits or you know my little
Hair would be done or whatever so by the time I was about 13 I was allowed to wear my hair down at that time so you know like in the early 2000s that was the style to like have your hair pressed or relax it or something so I used to
Once I got about 13 I would wear my hair down my back I would heat damage the crap out of it well I didn’t actually do my own hair yet um other people would do my hair side note I remember being called tender-headed okay let me save
That though for the for the texturism uh video but I do remember that when I started wearing my hair down and being allowed to wear lip gloss and when I was allowed to wear mini skirts those three things the lip gloss The Minis skirt and having my hair down that was when I
Remember um those same family members who would say like that we are their favorites us little girls um they started to I don’t want to say they started to turn on us but that is kind of how it it was almost giving I don’t want to say jealousy because I feel like
That’s a strong word um but yeah so I do remember them saying comments like exotical United thinks she’s all that like everybody in the family they used to like constantly say that I think I’m all that and that had started from when I was about 10 years old I knew nothing
About what that even meant I remember family members saying that I was conceited or uh I won’t use the hair comments but they also made comments about my hair you know how they had the good hair bad hair crap so people would make comments about my hair or whatever
Or me like thinking I’m all that or uh me they would accuse me of trying to be promiscuous or trying to get attention from boys mind you this is when I was maybe a pre-teen maybe from about fourth through maybe seventh or eighth grade and so those same women who I was their
Favorite before when I became uh basically hitting puberty once I started getting little boobs and a little bought and stuff like that I noticed that their attitudes towards me changed and I started getting those very common stereotypes of thinking I’m better um lots of people loved to call me bougie
So it wasn’t just and I will say that I think part of what tied into that as well was probably my background and the way that I speak and the way that I carry myself um but it’s not my fault that somebody else is ignorant and they equate speaking English with being white
So because for example I didn’t cuss I didn’t use ebonics and stuff like that I didn’t really use a lot of African-American vernacular English and part of that was because when I was 10 years old we transferred like we moved cities like we moved to the quote
Unquote suburb area and we ended up transferring to the white school and so there was no one who was really speaking in African-American vernacular English so I will say that probably could have played a role as well but I noticed that when it came to my dark skin cousins
Like my dark skinn unambiguous cousins I never saw any of my older cousins call them bougie I never saw any of the aunties called them bougie the aunties didn’t say that they thought they were better the aunti the aunties didn’t say the same comments about them as they
Said about me so looking back I do um tie it to being like colorist or whatever or maybe having internalized colorism or associating my phenotype with those qualities oh and by the way at the time when my aunties turned on me um they were kind of I don’t want to say
They were experimenting with being black Muslims but there was kind of a divide in my family because um a lot of us were Christian and then I don’t know if it was because of some sort of black power or Black Panther Movement or whatever cuz this was the early 2000s so anyway I
Remember those same aunties kind of like being pro I guess Muslim or black Muslim you know like the farahan types of people or the people that follow that so I’m not sure if their Pro Blackness or kind of their hotepery I don’t know if that was influencing their attitudes
Towards myself but I definitely noticed a shift as I reached puberty I went from being the cute favorite cousin to suddenly thinking I’m better and trying to take people’s uh trying to be promiscuous with boys and um being a bully that was another thing so the one
Of the aunties who my cousin la la she was her favorite and la la kind of looked like me this same Auntie she accused me of kind of like bullying her daughter or being this mean girl so I noticed I went from being the sweet cute favorite cousin and like oh that’s my
Baby to suddenly I’m a mean girl I’m a bully and I’m not saying that I was never mean because I I definitely think that I had moments where I was like mean or annoying or bratty you know I feel like a lot of children can be that way
So I’m not saying that I was like this perfect child but looking back I absolutely know for a fact that’s some of that was projection and the reason that I know that is because to this day almost 20 years later um that same side of the family they have still made those
Same exact comments towards me even to this day so this is how I know that part of it was motivated by my phenotype because you can’t keep calling me bougie or stuck up or saying that I think I’m better than others when you haven’t even seen me ever since you know you haven’t
Even consistently seen me in years so how can you really tell what my personality is no it’s 100% you are stereotyping me based off of the way that I look so I know that now but when I was a kid I didn’t really know that so I had never called these things colorism
Um another example of what I would call explicit colorism this was when we were actually in church and this was introduced to me the actual term well she didn’t use the term colorism but this is when I was introduced to the different like the bones yellow bone red
Bone whatever so so this was around the time that little Wayne’s song came out I like a long hair thick red bone remember that song so I remember some kids were playing it in church I know so but I went to a mega church so the youth
Church was there were like 500 um teenagers there so it was very big and like it wasn’t like one of those small tiny hole-in-the-wall churches because at that time we had transition from being Southern Baptist going to those hole-in-the-wall churches to going to these mega churches the prosperity
Gospel so I grew up on like Joel oin TD Jake Klo dollar um I grew up watching like TBN Benny Hinn uh Joyce Meer all of those people I grew up reading their books side note one of my punishments when I was grounded would be like reading books reading those Christian
Books um so I’m not sure how that was supposed to like help like it’s a punishment to read but anyway whatever so I was at this mega church so there were kids of all backgrounds and all Races and uh the girl who was playing that little Wayne song she was a dark- skinned
Unambiguous um black girl she looked like you know how Venus and Serena looked in the 9s she had that exact phenotype so the forcy hair dark skin broad features unambiguous and um I remember asking what is a red like what does that mean and she was like oh
That’s for light-skinned girls and I was like what is like who’s considered light-skinned because up until that time I had never really heard a lot of terms talking about skin tones unless people were talking about slavery so I knew about slavery by that time I knew that
Like during the slave days um people were like discriminated against and stuff like that but I did not view it as people are currently you know like calling people that or or like judging people based on skin so I I was kind of confused that’s why I asked and by the
Way this girl she was a little older than me she was like one of the leaders in the church um so they had where like the older the older teenage girls could kind of Mentor the younger girls so she was older so that’s why I was asking
Asking her and I was like yeah what is a red bone and she was like oh yeah that means a light-skinned girl and I was hanging out with my friend at the time who was younger than me and she was also mixed race so she had a white passing
Skin tone with uh light eyes like maybe a honey colored eyes and she had like dark blonde hair so she was there as well and then uh this unambiguous girl she was like she’s a yellow bone and she pointed to my friend the white passing friend she was like she would be a
Yellow bone you’re a red bone and then she pointed to me and then I was like oh okay and what are you and she was like I’m just and then she Shrugged so she didn’t answer the question she just said I’m just shrug and I was like oh like a
Brown bone like me and my friends we were like brown bone we were just very we were ignorant we didn’t really know and so she was just like yeah I’m I would be just brown or like just regular basically and I didn’t think I still didn’t think anything of it because I
Was like okay whatever it’s just a song I didn’t even I wasn’t allowed to even listen to Little Wayne when I was growing up so I never thought anything of it I never thought that little Wayne was a colorist or any of those things because I didn’t really know about it
Yet because I was so sheltered from a lot of that stuff so fast forward to another time when I was in church at this youth group by this time I was about maybe 15 so I was in like maybe ninth grade or something 16 years old
Kind of older like a teenager in high school and I remember there was this one unambiguous monor racial dark skinn black guy and he didn’t know who I was I had never met him I didn’t know his name um he knew my name though so I kind of
Became like without trying to I became well known like in my church this is a mega church so it’s not like a small church but I became well known people knew oh that’s so and so’s daughter or you know they kind of knew my name because it’s a church so you like see
Everybody so even if you don’t know who someone else is they might know who you are and they may know stuff about you because they’re gossiping and stuff part of why I’m glad that not in the church anymore but anyway so there was this one unambiguous black guy he was a grown man
And he would say bougie like every time I would walk into the church he would be like oh bougie Bouie Bouie bougie oh look at Miss bougie oh miss bougie has on gold today I remember one time I wore this beautiful uh satin kind of silky
Gold shirt so when I went to church um I was raised to dress very modest so even though I went to a um non-denominational church I would dress almost like how you would wear uh kind of like how you would dress to an interview or something like
That so I I kind of wore like pencil skirts kind of dresses and stuff like that um I think part of it could have been the black church background they wore like suits and stuff to church so maybe it was kind of that influence so I
Would wear heels and all of that stuff when I was 16 my little heels I would like borrow my mom’s heels and wear them to church and then I would wear like these little silky shirts these little button-up shirts and stuff and um you know I didn’t think anything of it but
He was would like comment on what I was wearing and he kept calling me bougie so much so to the point where other men in the church not boys men like older guys older teenagers these guys are 20 21 22 one of the guys was even a pastor in the
Church they started partaking in making fun of me and calling me bougie as if it was bad so before that I had never thought anything about the term bougie I just thought whatever um but they kept calling me bougie to the point where it was like starting to bother me a little
Bit but I I still never equated it to color or my phenotype because I was like maybe it’s because I wear kind of uh sparkly stuff or I dress up or something so I was I still never thought anything had to do with color but looking back I
Noticed that all of the people who were calling me these things or projecting all of these stereotypes on me they they were all like black identified or unambiguous or they consider themselves to be monoracial unambiguous black people um but I still didn’t equate that two color so I remember one time there
Was this new black guy who came to the church he was a teenage boy about my age and he was another unambiguous black dark skinn boy and I remember he did this thing where he called me bougie but he also would try to hit on me or
Whatever and when I said no he started talking about how he doesn’t like light-skinned girls anyway and how um a lot of light-skinned girls will walk around thinking that they’re Tyra Banks and then he would like make little comments about thinking I’m better or whatever and then one time he even tried
To make fun of me and he said I have a lightskinned forehead oh my God I’m going to hell for laughing at that so yeah he he made fun of my uh light-skinned forehead or whatever and then by that time I started kind of observing how my other friends were
Being treated who looked like me because looking back when it came to the girls at the church um most of my friends actually like 90% of actually yeah like 90% of my friends they all had my same phenotype my same uh skin tone background or whatever so skin and stuff
Like that that was never really a discussion amongst my friends because we all had very similar skin tones kind of anywhere from like some of my friends were more white passing by racial and then some of them were uh like a deeper caramel like a dark caramel um some of
Them were darker caramel girls and maybe they had light eyes or whatever so it was never really a discussion I noticed that the only people who would discuss it were usually unambiguous model racial black people another thing that I forgot to mention cuz by the way black people
Were not the only ones that talked about complexion um but at this time I was still so ignorant about like colorism and I never equated it to colorism because um I didn’t want to be perceived as I’m just assuming that they’re saying these things because of my skin tone so
I I carried that mindset with me all the way up until I was an adult so I still never even associated with I never Associated it with oh it must be because I’m considered light-skinned or whatever so I I never thought about that I had never even referred to myself using a
Term like light skinned because I didn’t really view being lightskinned as different I didn’t view having a mixed race background as being different oh that’s another thing by the way um people would make fun of my mom you know so anytime when I was in school uh like
The black private elementary school if I would say something someone didn’t like they would be like exotical United shut up with your white mom mom side note my mom is not white um I have a like I said my background is black white Latin American so but to them my mom is you
Know she was considered white passing my mom’s phenotype is I don’t consider it white passing her phenotype is like Selena the singer or uh Vanessa Bryant those are the two people that people say my mom looks like the most but I do remember a lot of people making fun of
Me because of my mom or like you know they would make fun of my mom or even make comments and say that’s not your mom you must be adopted or you know certain things like that because um you know my mom’s phenotype is different than mine my mom has um when I was
Growing up well she still has very long hair but when I was growing up my mom’s hair was I think I inherited my hair maybe from her but her hair is like very long it was always very long like down to her butt she has to constantly cut
Her hair and it was always very I don’t want to say straight I would say more of a wavy uh I don’t know maybe type two uh not quite like mine mine is like curlier but hers was more like straight or whatever you know that phenotype so at
This point I had never really thought anything about it I still thought okay maybe black guys I I was starting to think okay maybe black guys and black girls they seem to U kind of stereotype me a little bit or they seem to view me
As not really being one of them and I don’t want to I want to make a whole other video talking about the whole texturism stuff because I was also experiencing a ton of texturism stuff as well but I’m going to have to make a whole video about that but anyway
Another experience that I had was when I was going into modeling when I was 14 that was when I got my first contract to like be able to do little acting you know how you can like do little professional acting gigs as a kid or do
Some like modeling or whatever so I do remember going into the modeling agency my mom took me there and it was obviously like a white you know there were white people there and I do remember that the lady she said that I had a beautiful complexion or whatever
And she was like you have the perfect complexion to where you can wear any color like you can look good in any color so I still didn’t equate that to colorism because my Skin’s undertones my Fenty shade is around 300 to 310 I probably can go to 330 I I might even be
Able to tan all the way to like maybe a 350 or something um but anyway my Fenty shade is like 300 to 310 and I have neutral undertones in my skin so some people have warm undertones some people have cool undertones I have neutral undertones which means that I have both
And so that’s very rare So I still at that time I did not equate me getting a modeling contract due to my skin tone I didn’t equate that to colorism still at that time because I was thinking oh it’s because I have um like these neutral undertones because I did notice that yes
I could wear different makeup shades than like the other quote unquote black girls at the church or like I could pull off these different colors and you know I look good in like bright colors but I never saw that as like special I thought that anybody can do that but I did know
That my undertones were very unique um having neutral undertones while simultaneously being a woman of color and so I did get signed because uh you know she straight up she mentioned my complexion and mentioned like my phenotype and hair and all that so yeah but I still didn’t say that that was
Colorism at that time because I was like no nobody has unless somebody specifically named my skin tone I didn’t equate it to colorism and also unless un someone had specifically said something negative about darker skin kind of like my teacher in fourth grade when she when she was I guess colorist against herself
Saying nobody would allow her to you know ever be on a magazine because she’s like too dark basically that was the only thing that I had registered as colorism or talking about colorism at that time so but then things started to get a little bit murky because um at
That time I was going to a white school so I had moved to my allwhite neighborhood we moved there when I was around 10 years old and I spent the remainder of my Adolescence in that private white school so fun fact I’ve never gone to public school I’ve only
Gone to these private schools so anyway I remember um I was one of the only people of color in the school and when we were in about 9th grade we had to Read To Kill a Mocking Bird so that was a book about like racist stuff and it
Said the end word and all that so anyway I remember uh raising my hand and talking about I don’t know like kind of talking about how like that’s racist or whatever and it was a the conversation was fine nobody in the class was like trying to be racist or anything but we
Were just having a discussion about the book and there was one Indian guy he was like East Indian or whatever and he was like I guess dark skinned um he was darker than me he was like well he was significantly darker than me he was a
Very chocy um complexion he was like a very very dark warm chocolate I guess um and he had the straight hair or whatever so the way that I saw it was that I could relate to him a lot like I didn’t see the two of us as being different I
Saw us as we’re both people of color or whatever I was more of a one dropper back then so anyway I remember after class um talking to him because he was a part of the discussion in my nth grade English class and I was like oh yeah you
Know um as people of color and I started going on and on and he was like well I’m dark skinned you’re like you’re yellow and I remember at that point I was like okay so now at this point I’ve got black people mentioning my skin tone I’ve got
A white woman mentioning my skin tone and like giving me a modeling contract partially because of my skin tone and she explicitly said it and now I’ve got an Indian guy almost invalidating me because of my skin tone and then he called it yellow so at that point I did
Start to think about all of my experiences a little bit because I was like okay so the girl at the church she called me a red bone this Indian guy is calling me yellow and then at the modeling agency they said because I have a perfect skin tone and I can wear every
Color you know she was kind of implying that other skin tones can’t wear every color and so but I still at that point I knew nothing to the point where I still did not equate any of that to color or people’s knowledge of colorism and so
Then um time goes on and I get into US history in my white high school and um the history teacher was we were talking about African-Americans she was talking about how a lot of um black people were like in the South and then they had the Great Migration and she was talking
About how a lot of African-Americans it was very ignorant it was an ignorant conversation but anyway she was talking about how a lot of African-Americans can um have some native ancestry she was talking about how during the slave times or whatever I guess they tried to enslave the native
People and a lot of them died or whatever or they just pushed them out of their land but sometimes the native people would mix with the African people anyway and she was also talking about coloris as well and so I Remember by the way I was the only person of color in
The class not just the only quote unquote black person but the only person of color and she calls me out in front of the whole class and she’s like so um exotical United um during slave times they had like colorism and stuff like that and they would divide people up
Based on their skin tones and so exotical United can you speak about being high yellow and I remember first of all being floored because I never have referred to my skin tone by an actual color and also I don’t I don’t consider myself to be I guess high
Yellow like what the what does that even mean or at least at that time I was thinking wait a minute is is there a scale you know like there was no I didn’t have a skin tone scale I think that’s really what it was when I was a
Kid from ages zero to like 20 something I never had a skin tone scale so I never looked at myself and was like where do I fall on this scale anyway so she had called me high yellow and then she was talking about um the native you know talking about how some African-Americans
Have native mixture and then she asked me if I was if I had any native mixture and so at that time I said I was like no because I didn’t know of any um and so that was another thing where I was like okay this is weird and then I remember
Another time I forgot to mention this one this was a couple of grades before that so I was in junior high and a white guy my white teacher he was old he was like 65 or something so he was talking about race mixing uh it was another
History class actually so this was like Junior High history class I don’t know why they called my school a Junior High um I think it was cuz I was in a private school but anyway so he was actually talking about race mixing and then he he
Asked me if I spoke Spanish he was like exotical United do you speak Spanish and I was getting annoyed I remember being annoyed because I was thinking why why is he calling me out specifically like really and then I was like well why would you think I would speak Spanish so
I had a little bit of an attitude even back then um and he was like because your mom’s mexic again and so at that time I was a bit offended because I felt like that teacher was invalidating my blackness so by the time I had got up to
High school I had collected this series of experiences so one person’s calling me red bone another person’s you know some people are calling me yellow or yellow bone or high yellow some people are calling me out saying I have a perfect skin tone others are calling me
Out because of my mom or because of who my parents are but even still I still did not equate any of that to colorism texturism featurism racism or any of that at all because in my mind the way I thought of it was okay unless they are specifically naming skin tones and like
Directly dissing someone who is darker then I don’t consider it like colorism by the way when I was I think a teenager that was when that documentary dark girls came out and so I remember this is going to be very up but I remember the the women talking about
Being called and stuff like that and I remember my father who is an unambiguous black man when the lady on the show said that she was called I do remember my dad laughing and I remember being like like oh my gosh like why would you laugh at somebody who is
Um calling themselves or they’re basically crying because they were called dark so but anyway that that dark girl’s documentary that actually helped me as a teenager to realize okay my experience is nothing like this like I’ve never I’ve never called or dark at all or dark skinned or um any of
Those things or had guys I guess call my hair nappy or whatever or make fun of my lips like I had never had any of those things happen so that dark girls documentary it did uh start to get me thinking or whatever about my background and all that and I actually became
Extremely Pro black at that time because I realized like wow you know um black people are going through so much or whatever so that was when I decided that I want wanted to go to an HBCU so I actually I looked them up on Google and I looked up like all of these
Different videos and stuff and I saw all of these people like dancing and having fun and I I looked up the history of a lot of the people who came from HBCU like Martin Luther King Jr and all of these incredible people who went on to
Do amazing things and I was like wow I I I remember I was obsessed I was so obsessed and it was my dream to go to an HBCU by the way I actually I don’t regret my HBCU experience because it gives me so much smoke to talk about
On this YouTube channel um I it gives me a huge it gives me a a greater depth of experience because I’ve experienced the black community as a child I experienced you know the white community and I have a multi-racial background and then I got to re-experience the black community as
A young adult or like kind of coming into my adulthood so anyway all those I guess you could call them covert colorism experiences I still didn’t think much of it I had never um called my skin tone by any nicknames I had never really um identified myself with
Having a particular skin color at all because I I genuinely did not think that color mattered you know how people say I don’t see color so I kind of was like that when I was a kid because I didn’t really know any better I didn’t I didn’t understand yet that people had different
Experiences in life based on their color and based on their hair texture or their features so I didn’t think that any of that would be a big deal at all so anyway around the time that I was a teenager and uh kind of looking into these HBCU that was when the whole
Colorism talking point came up again online because I I figured out that these HBCU that they have black sororities and fraternities and so when I was Googling them when I was a teenager I saw that some people online on these online forums and stuff they were complaining about how so and so is
Colorist they were saying like a AKA a lot of them are for the light-skinned girls the Deltas are like some of them uh a lot of them tend to be darker skinned or whatever but for both of those groups you have to be pretty then they were trying to stereotype and say
That like the Zetas are like the fat ugly women and then they were saying that the sigma gamma Rose are like SG hoos is what they would call them but I still did not internalize any of that at the time because like I said I didn’t grow up around enough black people to
Wear it was really a discussion because all of the quote unquote black people that I hung out with Looking Back Now that I’m an adult they were actually mixed so whether they were biracial you know some of them were uh black and white some of them were multigeneration
Mixed so we all kind of had a similar skin tone and you know some of them had the lighter eyes basically they were not experiencing uh these things that they were talking about in dark girls although I will say I do remember I had a couple of unambiguous dark skinn
Friends um but looking back it’s interesting because my two unambiguous black friends that I had they both had long relaxed hair they both had long straight relaxed hair and both of them were also very much like oh I’m pretty I’m cute and so they hung out with us um
And we I I like them like they were my friends or whatever um but looking back I wonder if because they viewed themselves as pretty or whatever or because they viewed themselves as pretty privileged or because they had pretty privilege I’m wondering if our friendship was also based on our common
Experiences of pretty privilege because when I hung out with those girls who were unambiguous I don’t remember them ever um complaining about these guys don’t like me in fact I remember one of the girls not only did she become a model when she was older but I do
Remember her talking about some boy in high school or at the church or whatever in the High School uh youth church and she was like oh yeah he would love me he’s going to love my chocolate self and then I remember us like giggling like in agreement kind of like yeah he would
Like you’re pretty or whatever so even my unambiguous friends that I had at that time they still never discussed color or like they never said these guys are going to like you guys more because you guys are all lighter skinned like those two girls they were both the
Darkest ones in the group and they were very dark skinned like uh like Lepa or somebody like that uh they were African-American though and so I I’m not sure if it’s because they both had the longer hair that was like relaxed or whatever I don’t know if it’s because
They just had the pretty privilege they had like nice bodies or whatever not sure but looking back that’s interesting anyway so I hadn’t really thought about this whole color thing until I went to an HBCU and dear God did all hell break loose I mean I had never
Even I had experienced all those things that I talked about before I didn’t talk about the texturism part because that also played a role in how I viewed myself as well but when I went to an HBCU it literally was to the point where people did not even say my name they
Just referred to me as the tall light-skinned girl some of the guys would even try to they you know how people try to roast you and stuff so people started nicknaming me Hillary they started calling me Hillary and so that was kind of like one of my
Nicknames on campus and this was because of pheno type and also because of the way that I dressed and the way that I spoke and you know people they would also make other comments about talking like a white girl and stuff like that but that’s this video is about color so
They would start referring to me all the time time as being light-skinned or being hella light-skinned or um one girl oh my God I remember within my first week literally within my first week of college it was freshman week this one girl she accused me of like sleeping
With her boyfriend or whatever and no I’m not like trying to be delusional or make this up so the way that I worked at my HBCU was I would say about 85% of the people were of a darker complexion you can call it Brown to dark whatever 85%
Of the students were probably of a darker complexion so if you were light people would you would you would stand out number one but then also people would Mix us up with each other so me and my friend like they would always mix me up with one of my friends or whatever
And she did look like me like we had a similar complexion um she just had type four she had fory hair and sometimes she would wear a weave and her weave was brown so her hair was a whole different color than mine and I’m like she literally has a whole different hair
Texture and an entirely different hair color yet you’re still mixing us up because we’re both tall in my skin but no there was this girl who um she accused me of like sleeping with her man or whatever and I was like no you must have me mixed up with someone else
Because that had been happening at that point and this girl she literally called me a high yellow heer I had never heard that term except for in high school when we were talking about history and like slave times so I remember being shocked because first of all like I said I never
Called my skin tone a nickname or viewed my actual skin complexion as a part of how I would identify myself or a part of how others identified me because I was more of a one dropper I was more of a I don’t see color type of person up until
That point and so I still even at that point I I thought that was up but I still didn’t even get mad I continued talking to that girl after that and trying to prove myself almost going into this people pleaser mode so that um so
That I could try to prove that like no I’m not a heer no I’m not trying to take people’s man or whatever but I do remember that um I would say the girls and the guys they definitely would they would just call me light-skinned as a
Nickname like all the time and I also remember I’ll never forget this I remember one time trying to call myself carel like I referred to myself as Carmel and I’m not kidding I had my three quote unquote friends I’m putting friends in quotes but but three of my friends they literally all immediately
Started talking and like yelling at me and cursing saying you ain’t caramel what the you talking about like that sort of thing they all started saying that I was not caramel because they were trying to say I was like too light to be caramel or whatever which is
Technically true I mean my my Foundation shade I can tan to like a caramel if I really go in the sun or whatever that I I would say that that’s more of a contour that’s my Contour shade but anyway I never saw it as a big deal
Because I felt like caramel is you know it’s kind of close enough I know that technically I am not the exact shade of the caramel candy but I felt like if it’s a rough estimate like why can’t I call myself that and that was also
Because at that time I was so new to the whole classifying people by skin tones thing to the point where I didn’t really know of any other skin tone names other than chocolate and caramel and so that was what I was trying to like call myself in a positive way but when those
Girls became so vicious they went from being my friends to viciously arguing against me and gatekeeping the color caramel that was when I realized okay so now others are going to I guess determine my skin tone or like I can’t talk about my skin tone and by the way
One of the girls that was like basically cussing me out about using the term caramel she was light-skinned first of all she was also light-skinned she was just a little bit darker than me with um she had like 4 C hair um she was I would call it quote unquote light-skinned
Black so she was overwhelmingly majority African I’m talking 80 to 90% or whatever her whole family was dark skinned unambiguous but she just happened to be of a lighter tone so um she had a lighter skin tone and then everything else was like very African looking um if I could describe her I
Would say she looked like um the closest tone I can think of is more like a Sierra um but she was definitely called light-skin oh I have’t interesting story about that so actually I think I talked about it in another video um my colorism experience when it came to modeling
Around that time because cuz that was when I went back into modeling again I had taken a break from it when I was a teenager so I could focus on school and all that but anyway um it’s funny because Miss Carmel the one who was
Arguing me up and down about how I can’t call myself Carmel at that point I felt extremely gaslit having three women just become vicious because I called myself caramel so I remember that um out of those three women so there were four of us in a little friend group three of us
Were light-skinned and then one of them was a darker skinned eura girl so she was like Nigerian um from the eura tribe or whatever so the three of us were all light-skinned we all got like the guys and the girls at that HBCU trust me they named out every single person that was
Light-skinned so oh another thing that I realized once I went to an HBCU by the way I was in a totally different city different part of the country and so I do think that like geography also can play a role um because at the HB at the
HBCU there were people there from all over the world so there were lots of people there from like the Caribbean or from uh different parts of Africa or you know different parts of the United States some of the people were from the south some were from the West Coast or
Whatever so out of my four or out of my three friends two of them were absolutely light-skinned because everybody would call them light I had never heard them being called anybody else or anything else and nobody said oh that caramel girl over there nobody says
That so that’s why I never viewed it as a big deal to call your skin tone by a specific nickname um but anyway so those two girls were absolutely light-skinned so I remember going back and forth being like well if I’m not caramel like you guys are both not caramel either because
You guys are not really much darker than me you’re maybe three Shades Darker at best like you’re you’re really right there in the same range and then I remember Miss caramel the first one who like really argued she was the darkest of the three of us lightskins and she
Was like no like um I’m caramel like you’re not caramel and I remember putting my hand next to hers like it it literally became a whole thing so we put our hands next to each other and I was like your hand is basically like the same shade as mine she was like okay
Well no my hands are pale like look at my face like my face is darker than yours Like You Wear Yellow powder um I Don’t Wear Yellow powder you know the Banana Powder she was like you wear the yellow powder and the orange one is like
Too dark for you you can’t wear the same powders as me so that’s how I know that like I am more of a caramel and you’re not carel and then I remember saying okay well then what am I and then all three of them were like I don’t know but
You’re not caramel you ain’t caramel you ain’t caramel and so at that point that was when I also realized that the that the shade caramel was not only a light-skinned shade as well I mean I already knew that caramel was also lightskinned but I also knew that Carmel
Was a coveted skin tone identity at that point because another thing happened so I went to a club with the same girls and I remember um it was the guy was a a DJ he was like I guess a black DJ or Puerto Rican but has some African you know in
His background so he shouted out on the on the mic he was like shout out to the dark skins and then the dark skin girls were like wo and then you know he was shouting out all of these different skin tones he was like shout out to dark SKS
Shout out to Chocolate girls shout out out to red bones shout out to Yellow Bones blah blah blah so he was saying all of these different skin tone names over the mic and then I remember when he shouted out um caramel he was like where
My caramel’s at then like a lot of the girls were like yelling like oh caramel like really like hyping it up like hyping up being the caramel tone in particular and by the way um like I said you know how we ended up voting on this channel about what we are going to
Consider lightskin you know how we voted for um you guys voted for Fenty shades 390 and above I think it’s so funny that you guys voted that because that scale is actually very accurate to where I went to an HBCU because there were women who were significantly darker than me
Like going more towards almost going more towards like mag the stallion or going more towards that phenotype but even they got called light-skinned all the time and so I I really do believe that sometimes people um maybe they conflate being mixed race with being lighter skinned because when I went to
An HBCU there were plenty of girls that looked like Chile I mean I won’t say plenty but there were like dozens of girls that look like how chili looked and they always got referred to as lightskinned you guys also saw one of my earlier videos where I talked about
Modeling and how they divided us they divided us up based on light skin and dark skin for for the model casting or whatever and um the the lightskin side it actually was about Fenty Shades 390 and above and I know notic that a lot of the 390 girls they looked they did have
A phenotype more close to like a chili or something like that with kind of the straighter hair their hair was like looser than mine I remember that their hair was looser than mine their features were maybe a little bit more pointed so what a lot of people don’t talk about is
How your features um play into the way that your skin tone is perceived but anyway I remember uh caramel was a very coveted light skin tone because I felt like people were using caramel at has the darkest shade of light skin so this is why I’m probably I’m probably going
To make a video about how in my opinion caramel is the new paper bag test because obviously people aren’t walking around with like paper bags or anything people aren’t posting paper bags before they walk into a building and also paper bags today in the manufacturing companies the paper bags of today don’t
Necessarily look the same as the paper bags back then so you technically don’t even know what the actual like cut offs were and also why is it so important to begin with but I remember another thing happened and it was I guess you could call it colorism um so the the guy the
Turtle guy so I talked about him in in another video be sure to watch my storytime video about how I got kicked out of Bible study so Turtle guy that was I would call that um I don’t know if I would call that colorism but he was
Like very much fetishizing me I mean absolutely fetishizing me he was like she’s just my type my type is she’s tall and light skinned with long hair so he was like to making my identity based on my skin and hair and like you know based
On my body as opposed to calling me by name I guess the biggest culture shock for me was not really being called by my name as much kind of like my skin tone was a nickname and I noticed that the only nicknames they used when I was in college was light-skinned and dark
Skinned nobody ever described somebody and said oh yeah the one brown skinn girl that’s from New York no they would say the dark skinn girl from New York and you kind of knew who they were talking about or they would say oh the tall light-skinned girl she has long
Black hair or they would say oh the dark skinn girl with the light eyes so it wasn’t they didn’t have all these different nuanced tones like oh the caramel one oh the one who’s like copper and then she’s like has slightly thin lips and then high cheekbones no they
Weren’t doing all that it was just they called them lightskinned or dark skinned and when I was at an HBCU brown skin was a it was a part of the dark skin group so like a I guess you could say like a brandy a Gabrielle Union a Jennifer
Hudson um somebody in that range they would be put as a part of the darker skin group and so maybe amongst the darker skinn group they might be called Brown because they were the lighter of the darker skinned people um but from what I remember it was light skin and
Dark skin and then the whole brown skin that was decided amongst darker skinned people who they’re going to call Brown or whatever but another thing that I started to experience when I was in college so I think I did a video already about uh the paper bag test and how
People did that paper bag test as a joke when I was in college and how uh one of my friends who is also light-skinned she’s lightskinned she’s just darker than the than that paper bag or whatever how they separated the two of us based on this whole paper bag thing or
Whatever so that was another experience that I had where people were singling out my skin and by the way it was black men I believe it was black you know obviously black women and men that were doing that because because this was all add an HBCU so these are all black/
Black identified people and I also remember these idiots breaking into my dorm room these crazy thirsty ass boys from the boys dorm so we had like visitation when we were in the dorms and stuff and so sometimes girls would bring guys to the dorm like to visit and then
One of the guy one of the girls she was uh pick me and she uh the guys ditched her so that they could try to come to my room so the way that my room was set up was had my pictures on the front of my
Door you know how like when you’re in college you decorate your your door and you say like Sarah lives here or you know you put some pictures of yourself so me and my roommate we both decorated the door so on my door I had like my modeling pictures on there and stuff and
Then I had my name on there and these guys they already kind of knew who I was or whatever but they saw me and they came in and they like basically busted into my room and I screamed because I was like changing and I was like oh oh
My God and I was like no boys allowed I was very you know I was a teenager so I was like no boys are allowed in here like get out of here this is a girls room oh my God what are you doing and I do remember um they were trying to like
Hit on me or whatever these idiots these ghetto ass okay sorry I’m not going to go in but these guys by the way they were all MLS guys the three of them they were all um mixed like one of them was a biracial guy he was like very light with
Like the green eyes or whatever and then another one was I would call him uh he looked he looked like ti so I don’t know if if you want to call that kind of lighter skin I don’t remember if he was monoracial so I’ll just say light skin
Black or monoracial or whatever and then the other one he was multi-racial so these fools I found out later on that they were trying to make a bet on like who I would give my number to and anyway it was very stupid but I will never forget the the ti guy he talked
Specifically about how I was his exact type or whatever um he was talking about me being light-skinned and how my skin tone is like his the perfect tone and how I was like his exact type or what he wanted and I got offended because I was
Like what do you mean like so you’re telling me that if somebody is dark skinned and they’re like perfect for you you’re not going to be with them because they have a dark skin tone and like basically they’re like too black and I remember he was like if she ain’t yellow
I ain’t falling in love so that is an explicit like I would say that is like absolutely un deniably having a skin tone bias or like promoting a a colorist type of view or dividing people up by color so I remember thinking okay like what the heck that’s random and wow get
Out of my room I remember another time that colorism was talked about um it was a he was an unambiguous he was African I don’t know what kind of African but I remember his name was like FEI no no offense I mean I’m not trying to say
That like it’s a stereotype name but I just remember his name was like femi or fumi or something with an F and then an i at the end anyway so I remember this is when I was in college I was working at a coffee shop and he talked about how
He likes light-skinned girls so in college I always was having this thing where guys were saying they like light-skinned girls and it wasn’t just dark skinned black men sometimes it was mixed race guys like a lot of Creole guys um would try to like talk to me or
Whatever or they would ask me if I’m Creole and then they would ask me like do you speak French or whatever I actually have a story about that I’ll probably have to share it on patreon though cuz I’m not about to like share everything on here but so I remember one
Guy he tried to hit on me fumi or FEI he tried to like hit on me or whatever and then I rejected him and then he called me boring after that and then he went to like try to hit on other girls who had like the exact same literally like we
Look like we could be sisters he would try to hit on other girls that had the same phenotype as me another thing I noticed with an unambiguous black man another unambiguous black guy that worked at the coffee shop with me when I was in college he would try to um
Compare me to other light-skinned people like to other light-skinned girls so I remember one time he was trying to Humble me so I worked at the coffee shop so we had to wear like a little hat so I wore my hair in a curly low bun I didn’t
Look cute okay I’m just being honest I did not look cute my hair was in like this ratty ass low bun my uh I was wearing a hat and I was wearing an apron so obviously I didn’t look cute and then I remember one time this girl who had my
Exact same phenotypes uh same skin tone and everything same facial features like everything was pretty much the same she came into the coffee shop and then this guy he was like oh exotical United she’s on you right now so he was trying to like basically humble me or
Whatever and I remember thinking well we look exactly the same the only difference is that I am wearing these ugly you know I have this ugly ass apron on an ugly outfit on but I have noticed a pattern where a lot of unambiguous people they will try to uh use another
Light-skinned person to Humble you they they will never notice how they don’t use an unambiguous person to Humble you they will try to use somebody who is of a similar phenotype to yourself to Humble you that is an overarching theme that I have seen not just in my life but
Also on YouTube people will come on here and they’ll be like oh well you guys all must be ugly and you know that’s why you feel the need to make these types of YouTube channels it’s because you guys don’t look like how Beyonce looks you guys don’t look like halberry or Aaliyah
Or anybody else and so I’ve noticed that a lot of people they they actually play themselves when they try to compare you to another person who literally looks like you and it’s like oh well so and so has a smaller nose than you and it’s like you are literally comparing my
Natural nose to somebody’s rhinoplasty nose like is that a flex or like what are you doing but anyway I remember another time uh basically people were they were constantly commenting on my skin I just got to be honest they were constantly commenting on my skin tone so
Yes they would say things like oh your Skin’s beautiful but I never equated that to because of the lightness of it I never thought about it like that until other people brought it up and started saying how they didn’t feel like they were as pretty or whatever and I did
Notice a pattern no I’m not being delusional but I did notice a pattern where a lot of the girls that did beef with me randomly they did have opposite phenotypes from me for the most part so not all of them did but a lot of them
Did and I do think that a lot of unambiguous women have resentment against MLS women because of the attention they get or like I even remember when I told the colorism story time about how the 390 girls at the modeling thing um the 390 girls who had kind of ambiguous hair textures or
Facial features they easily went to the quote unquote light-skin side while the 390 girls or maybe somewhere around that shade and they had maybe forcy hair and Broad features they got put on the quote unquote dark skin side so that was interesting as well I think that that
Can cause certain people to feel resentment if they don’t feel pedestalize but anyway another thing that happened with colorism or with skin is I remember I had just started at that coffee shop and um the guy who worked there he was a fellow he was a fellow
MLS guy and then there were other like unambiguous guys there they were like oh um are you from around here like you definitely don’t seem like you’re from this city like where are you from and then I told them where I was from in the
United States by the way I’m from the US and this guy was like oh yeah I can tell you’re not from around here because you know you’ve got that skin tone of somebody that would not be from here and I remember thinking what the does that mean like we have damn near the
Same skin tone number one and number two like why is my skin why does my skin make it like I’m not from here so I would say that was another experience where once again somebody outside of myself they were making my skin tone my personality you know how people say you
Make your skin tone your personality you make being mixed your personality no others project personalities onto US others for the most part project uh skin tones and their stereotypes of those skin tones onto US I didn’t even know who Hillary was by the way I didn’t not
Grow up watching Fresh prins I had no idea who the Hillary was so I was like why are people calling me Hillary who’s Hillary and then when they pulled up the picture I was like what the like really so it’s not like a lot of mixed race light-skinned people
Are over here making these things their personality um it’s other people who are either pedestalize are calling it out um and I haven’t even begun to get into texturism because something that people refuse to talk about is how texturism and featurism are just as prevalent if not more prevalent than colorism I think
That colorism is just more of a popular conversation and I feel like it’s just easier to compare when it comes to pulling up pictures for YouTube videos and stuff but um I’ve definitely got some smoke when it comes to featurism and colorism and I’ve got I can make a
Whole hourong video about my experiences with each of those things I probably will but another thing I remember is that one of my friends she was a model she was unambiguous dark skinned 4C hair um her phenotype I would say yeah she was kind of like a teaster or something
Like that so we were like really good friends I met her through doing like Runway shows and stuff we did them together and I remember she was one of the first very pretty women that I remember kind of complaining or whatever because she was like oh yeah um I went
To this casting or she was like I heard about this casting I don’t know if it was the Straight Out of Compton thing or if it was like something else but it sounded very similar you know how they had that casting where they were like the light-skinned girls are the main
Ones and then like the the bee girls are like you have weaves or something and then like the the lowest level women or like the overweight dark skinned women I don’t know if you guys remember that Fiasco I can’t remember if it was that exact one around when I was in college
Or if it was something else but I do remember that friend complaining about how she said that all of the lightskin girls were more like desired for modeling or they were more desirable for getting these opportunities to be in like commercials or music videos and stuff like that so that was something
Else that happened another thing that happened was people consistently invalidating my experiences and stuff like that so for example um a lot of HBCU they have their own like fashion shows or their own little photo shoots and stuff like that so I remember when we did this photo shoot for like the
Campus bookstore you know how they have like the merch on the colleges where it’s like your sweatshirt says fam you or whatever so they they picked models at the college to like be photographed in the in the sweatsuits and stuff so I was one of the people in the pictures
And I remember people all over campus complaining they were like oh no they only pick tall light-skinned girls to like do any sort of modeling by the way that was completely false but people would say they only pick tall light-skinned girls or they picked all light-skinned girls you have to be tall
Skinny and lightskinn if you want to do the modeling or if you want to be seen on this campus so I remember that was one of the complaints um like I said I actually don’t think that was true because there were a lot of Darker skinned girls another thing I will say
Is that anytime I remember doing some sort of opportunity like that um there were actually more light-skinned girls auditioning than darker skinn unambiguous girls so I think that that also played a role I don’t think that the casting people who were literally darkskinned black women I don’t think
That those women were like oh let me try to like pick more light skins than dark skins no they were just picking based on whoever was available another thing I noticed about skin was when I was at an HBCU um damn near every girl on campus most of whom were unambiguous dark
Skinned monor racials were obsessed with the light-skinned guys so for all those people who say oh lightskinn guys are out of style or like it’s all about the dark skinn black men um not when I was in college and by the way I went to college uh it was like I guess
You could say 2010s so yeah they were obsessed with the MLS guys with the mixed race guys um I remember there was one guy he was mixed race he was like a deeper he would be like 390 Fenty 390 skin tone he was like that skin tone and
He had like loose curly hair and Not only was he called light skin without a thought I mean cuz I remember being like who are they talking about lightskinned guy with curly hair and I remember when they said his name I was like him because he was so much darker than me to
Where I I personally had never thought of him as like lighter skin he was he was around Meg the stallion’s complexion that’s why so but because of his features and hair texture around the whole campus thousands of girls they were calling him light-skin so all of
This uh stuff that you hear on YouTube now where everybody’s trying to move the goalpost for what’s lightskinn and what’s not my first question is why are you so obsessed with what the light-skin gold poost is especially if you yourself are dark skin unambiguous that’s number
One but then number two it’s like the standard for light-skin for a guy is usually much darker like nobody cares about calling a guy light-skinned but when you’re calling a girl light-skinned they don’t want to call you that because light-skinned is a compliment and then not being light-skinned is supposed to
Be your regular or there’s nothing special about you if you look at my video where it’s like exhaust articles being gas lit for 30 minutes straight you’ll see where one of the black women empowerment content creators the madm Melle she calls out an unambiguous black
Woman who has light eyes so I would call her an ABW ambiguous black woman so she literally says that outside of her ambiguous feature which is her eyes there is nothing special about her so I’ve noticed that that is somewhat of a theme sometimes in the black community
Or at least in my experiences with the black community but the whole people obsessing over skin tone thing it didn’t stop at the HBCU I have so many other examples but it’s like I don’t feel like thinking of all of them right now I’ll probably make more videos the more I
Remember but that experience it was not exclusive to an HBCU so I’ve lived all over the country at this point I do like to move cities sometimes so I’ve lived on the west coast the East Coast the South and in the South I noticed that people unambiguous black women in
Particular would randomly bring up my skin tone or they would do the same thing so describe my identity based on my skin tone which is you know you’re kind of emphasizing skin tone if the way you describe a person is based on their skin tone then yeah you are emphasizing
Skin tone so don’t get mad when other people refer to that person as light-skinned or the curly hair girl or whatever don’t get mad when other people refer to her as that when you are the ones describing her as that but I did notice like in the South um people did
The same thing also same thing on the East Coast as well well actually same thing everywhere to be honest where it’s this experience of being thrown in and out of Blackness I’ve noticed the only place where people try to throw my skin tone in and out of light skin is on the
Internet and that’s because there’s a lot of gaslighting on the internet so if Fenty shade 300 is not light-skinned by the way Rihanna is anywhere from I think 300 all the way to 370 so if Rihanna is not lightskinn like come on that’s just the internet that’s trying to say stuff
Like that because they decide and pick and choose who’s lightskinn based on number one their self-esteem level number two how much they like or dislike the person and number three based on what their argument is they will constantly try to move the goal post for what’s light-skinned and what’s not so
People will try to say Khloe and hi are not light-skinned if you look at Khloe Bailey’s video on Vogue where she’s putting on makeup she is Fenty 300 so if you’re saying Fenty shade 300 which is lighter than Rihanna’s shade if if Rihanna is not lightskin so it’s like
What is it this is gaslighting because you’re trying to say that Rihanna would be an unambiguous brown skinned black woman and we all know that that’s completely false so they try to take people in and out of the light-skin category and then they get mad when women like Rihanna replace them because
It’s like well if you just called her a brown skin unambiguous black woman then why are you mad when she’s replacing you in Black roles she’s replacing you in black movies or in Black media like you can’t get mad at that but anyway those are just some of the random experiences
That I can think of about skin tone um I did not grow up referring to my skin tone as anything important or anything where it’s like a part of my Identity or whatever it was other people who kind of like made it a big deal to where I was
Like oh okay is this a big deal or something like am I on a pedestal or something because others keep bringing it up and it was mainly black or black identified men and women so it wasn’t even myself who was bringing it up anyway I’ll probably make a texturism
And then a featurism video and talk about my experience with those things as well but what do you ladies think can you relate to any of these experiences are you one of those lightskins who you never cared about skin tone and other people were the ones constantly bringing
Up your skin tone or calling you light skin or stereotyping you based on your light skin what do you ladies think let me know in the comment section and I’ll talk to you next time stay pretty ladies
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