Telling DD the darker your skin the more beautiful you are but she won't accept it

[PatricksRum]

DD7 is slightly darker than me and consistently tells how she hates her skin because "it's too dark."
She says she wants skin like mine as then she could be beautiful.
The difference between us is negligible and barely noticeable.

She has lots of darker-skinned dolls, toys and books containing them but is there anything else I can do to reinforce that black is beautiful?

Yeah those light skinned people all have it so good.

Proximity to whiteness/eurocentricity comes with privilege.

You should educate yourself on the cost of this proximity, because it is not all privilege. Infighting between lighter and darker skinned individuals allows the white community to continue to decide beauty standards which in turn influences self love. You dont dismantle one hierarchy of colour by replacing it with another.

Focusing on beauty is problematic. Out of curiosty In this system that is going to fix everything by elevating darker skin above lighter skin, according to the OP, will the darker a d lighter skinned ladies still be shading the sides of their noses to make them look narrower? And will straight hair still be more glamorous / professional than rocking natural coils and kinks? Will biceps be beautiful?

The enemy is not light skinned people, it is a system that upholds whiteness as the standards of beauty/ acceptance against which we should measure ourselves. Look at the black doll / white doll experiment and see how early that crap starts.

Nobody said it is ALL privilege. You are still Black. Of course you face racism, too, and the validation is based on racist values. However, there is still a societal privilege with being light skinned. Denial of that is totally bizarre in our world of bleaching creams and "blemish removers". It is as if you havent grown up in a Black community/family.

It is as if you havent grown up in a Black community/family.

Happy with my lived experience and Black credentials. I don't need to ask about yours, given your fixation with religious groups and the trans community. Nothing suspect about that at all on a board called Black Mumsnetters.

What are you talking about?

Just tell her it's the bag to carry her blood and bones. Because, let's face it, on a biological level, that's all it is.

However, thee are millions of people who bleach their skin whilst, simultaneously, being proud to be black.

I get why she feels like that. Society can make us feel like that! But, you just have to keep letting her know that she's beautiful.

On a side note, my mixed race daughter has always longed to be darker. She regularly uses self tan and a darker foundation. up. I tell her she's beautiful the way she is but she does not agree, she wants to be darker (always has done). She looks far better with her NATURAL skin colour..

Excuse the typos!

I've watched that and was so sad

One thing I've never understood is that some people use skin lighteners religiously but still have their own distinctive features; I've seen this myself and have never got the logic. And I don't think those lighteners ever make you look as 'white' as assumed either

I agree. Its just so tragic. There's a 70 something woman on TikTok who has been bleaching her skin for decades! She has finally stopped, bless her 🙏🏿

Crikey! The opening post of this thread and the validating posts from others are part of the reasons why I hate that the Black community is seen as a monolith (by both Black people and others). The mindset displayed here, if not deliberately obtuse, is severely lacking in logic and awareness but dressed up as defending Blackness. So frustrating. I just can't.

I agree, it is disheartening to see us discussing who is more validated/ less discriminated against etc etc depending on skin shade.
There are so many other factors in addition to skin colour that will attract bias that I doubt I could work out exactly what I was being subjected to at any given time.
And I don’t say this lightly as I grew up in a culture where the ‘browning’ (fair skinned women) were regarded more favourably by men.
But my experiences, regardless of where anyone thinks I am on the blackness scale, are just as valid as anyone else’s and I agree with those who say we should be lifting each other up rather than tearing down and we should be reinforcing to our children that they are so beautiful, light or dark.