The Black Sheep

I have nothing against girls that choose to bleach their skin, your body, your business. And I assume that resorting to bleaching took a lot of thinking and logical reasoning. Society will just judge the women and men that are bleaching without looking for the root cause. When people choose to alter their bodies in such a drastic way, mental illness isn’t far behind. (Ignorant people already thinking insanity but depression is also mental illness so sit down.) Look at people that are anorexic, there is a mental imbalance but here in Zimbabwe you can only go to the mental hospital if you walk around naked or eat cement rarely for depression. Most African parents don’t rate depression.

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I got all my sisters with me!!!

I am the first of 5 Zulugirls and I’ve always been the black sheep in more ways than one. For a very long time, if something went wrong in the house, you could bet your bottom dollar twas me. But that’s another story. You’ll notice from the picture that all my sisters are extremely light. When I was younger it wasn’t a problem. I didn’t even notice. Until I got to high school. My sisters would come to fetch me or whatever and everybody would be like, “Why aren’t you as pretty as your sisters?” or “Thembi your sisters are so different, what happened to you?” As much as they pussyfoot around the issue what they meant was, “why aren’t you light?”

The vultures would just pry and pry at the issue. People don’t realise that words aren’t just words. They stick. So I became self-conscious, bathed more, scrubbed more, stayed out of the sun. The misconception here being black was dirty. The ugly duckling has to become a light swan you see. But even with the vigorous bathing ritual, nothing changed. So I asked a family member why I was different and they told me it’s because I looked like my father. Hogwash! After years of struggling with it, I realised that my father is only dark on the face because of eczema but my sisters get that complexion from his genes. I investigated further and realised we don’t have the same father at all.

Would I have bleached my skin if I had access to the ‘goods’? Yes, I would have. I was young and confused and the people around me weren’t alleviating the issue. I don’t even harbour any spite to my yellow sisters. Let them flourish. But the root cause of me wanting to be lighter was resolved. I wasn’t dirty, I was of a different genetic makeup altogether.

A chaos management seminar I went to once taught me, “Don’t get mad, get curious!” Before we lash out at people that do bleach we should at least try to understand where it’s coming from. Try not to comment on things you don’t understand.

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[…] I literally just came off of Khanyi Mbau’s Instagram Live where she said, “the reason I lighten my skin is because it’s easier for lighting on a movie set.” I screen recorded it if you wanna see it. And I get it, you know like when you watch dark movies like Harry Potter on the cam version and all you can see are eyeballs and teeth. Happens everytime I try to take pictures. It’s even worse when I take pictures with people of a lighter complexion. I try to avoid it but all my little sisters are yellow borderline coloured. Tricky. In 2015 I blogged about what life was like being the only dark skinned girl amongst light skinned girls (The Black Sheep.) […]

Gilbert
Gilbert
10 years ago

Keep up the good work, nice piece of work.

TheComplicatxn
10 years ago
Reply to  Gilbert

Thank you. Will keep on keeping on

Anonymous
Anonymous
10 years ago

Wow!

TheComplicatxn
10 years ago
Reply to  Anonymous

Loves you also. Thernx for your support

nathanmajuru
10 years ago

I’m the ‘darker’ one among my siblings because the genes decided to take my mother’s side.
My siblings used to tease me because of my less-lighter shade. They teasingly nick-named me ‘Mukaradhi’ or ‘Keddah’ for short. It hurt at first but as time went on I accepted things I could not change.
That is why my twitter handle is ‘@Keddah83’

TheComplicatxn
10 years ago
Reply to  nathanmajuru

Embrace all that’s meant to hurt you it confuses them. My dad used to say “laugh at yourself before they laugh at you” its served me well

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