BY SIHLE HLOPHE

Barbie lying on the ground… dismembered
Tormented by mollycoddled, lily white princesses who could do no wrong
Scalp scalded by strange chemical concoctions… scabs concealed by a make-do fringe
‘Better black’ accent refined at the expense of… mother’s tongue
Body belittled for not meeting those evasive post-modern Eurocentric ideals
Images of other equally insecure people of color propagating that I change how I look…
Working from a place of lack where school diaries read, “No natural hair allowed”
To depraved places of overindulgence where patriarchy shoved the jiggling buttocks
Of lost black women in my face
I had to find my truth… I had to acknowledge my beauty
It had always been there after all
I regurgitated the self-hate that was shoved down my throat
I embraced the beauty that is my blackness
Oh and once the mental chains had been unshackled I embraced me in my entirety
From my full lips to my curly hair that shrunk after every swimming lesson…
My voluptuous pear-shaped body to my tone of brown
No aspirations of being a yellow bone; I’m content with this shade
Every day I am attacked by a system that insists I am not good enough the way I look
If only you could straighten this or trim that...
Every day I fight that system and its silly ideals and expectations
You see me without a weave and fake lashes and think I’m plain?
No sweetheart, I’m just quietly confident in my BEAUTY.