Its smooth, flawless, some places have a light dash of pink or dark brown rings; the vanilla seems to flow through and through. The morning sunset gives it radiance, by noon if not covered it has a flush of redness; by evening it is the colour of toffee. From a birds eye view one would assume it was washed in honey and milk, but from the perspective of a lighter skin person I will tell you the struggles.
Throughout your early years most persons admire you because you are a sweet brown skin baby especially if you live in the Caribbean and got a little less kinky hair. By the time you get to primary school you have the attention of most teachers and children because you are the pretty little brown girl. Not that there is anything more special about you than your darker skin friends. Then when you hit high school you are disliked by some, called names, favoured by some but still favoured by your teachers. If a child was given the wrong over you, parents would refer to you as the red skin pickney.
Your teenage and young adult years are glorious because most of the boys are attracted to the idea of being with a lighter skin girl. So you are pursued by many, by this time all eyes are on you, you probably even develop a reputation that you are bad just because of your skin colour. There is a concept that all brown skin girls are wild and tend to date a lot of guys, not that some hasn’t made it bad for us but that is just a minority. Once you are in your adult years some men simple want to date you because of your skin, they spend on you because of your skin. Women hate you because their spouse cheated with a lighter skin girl or they assume you had life handed to you. Store clerks are polite to you, and even if you were wearing a blue and grey lipstick they would tell you how gorgeous you look. If you bumped any part of your body accidentally, it would look as though you were in a fist fight. If you scrubbed a little hard in the shower , the evidence would be there.
After all that you still struggle throughout the day to maintain your shade, you love darker skin and wish you had it. You admire your friends who are smooth chocolate and you date men who are chocolate coated. You don’t want to have a child with colour has light has yours, a shade or two darker is perfect for you. If you forget to moisturize your body and your face, your entire day is a mess because your skin shows the dryness visibly, the only thing is it seems only you can see this. If you decide to take a walk without sunscreen or an umbrella on a sunny afternoon, your face and neck shows the sign for a whole week. Purchasing make up is a challenge because you have several shades, during the 1st and last part of the year you are lighter, otherwise your complexion fluctuates as the degrees climb. Wearing shorts and sandals on a sunny day or going to beach isn’t perfect for you, the perfect day for you is when it’s cloudy or overcast. Your skin ages sooner than that of a darker skin person, you develop small wrinkles and dark eye bags. Seeing people who alter their complexion to be a shade lighter is marveling to you because you would trade your lighter skin to be darker any day.
Deep