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Bare | Mel C. | Visual Knock Outs Photography

I have had to familiarize myself with the brown body. It’s strange. I remember this time during my first semester in college when I woke up in the morning and one of the guys across the hall, black like me, had just woken up and was fighting off sleep. I was surprised to find that his lips and eyes were swollen just the way mine get swollen first thing in the morning.

The first time I saw a black person outside of my family naked was also surprising. We were hooking up, and there were all these pores and scars and tones that… I know it sounds dumb, but I couldn’t believe that these were normal to black people, not just something weird about the way my skin worked. That first time was an awakening. Everything was weighted in a way that my partner probably couldn’t understand. That was also the first time I had ever been naked with someone else. And I felt myself spiritually relax in a way that I’d never experienced before. I didn’t realize how alien a lifetime of being separate from people that looked like me was making me to my own body. I was realizing that, apart from my insecurities with my weight, I had this overall lack of understanding about what my body was. 

It was different, too, because I experienced thinking of my body in positive terms- not un-pretty for not being something that I was not, but pretty for some of the things it was. I had quietly held my whole body as something to be worked around, my entire life.

It was weird, the first time I realized that the color of my skin could be a positive to someone.

It has taken me a long time to teach myself how brown is beautiful. I’m still learning. Tumblr helps. My sister and her friend have really helped. I feel so much hope for the future.

<3

(via earthenkinde)

• Reblogged from chainzdesign
• Source: chainzdesign