Take that initiative

Dear Elsie

Growing up, my aunt always bought me black dolls and taught my mom to do the same, I didn't like it then cause other kids had their white tall skinny and sexy Barbie dolls, I guess a great example of a perfect illusion, and I? , I had Imani this black skinned and I mean Black skinned who wasn't very tall and didn't have the hottest body either (-_-she could have just been black thou -lol-),   My aunt would say "Aren't you Imani's mom? So why then should Imani be white?" Lol did I care? I just wanted to have the most beautiful doll, I wanted to fit in when we playing, we'd be playing and exchanging dolls and nobody went "I want Blessing's doll" I guess Imani was ... weird ?
Mind you,  I didn't have white friends lol, these are black little girls,  dark skinned like Imani but they feel Imani wasn't good enough, isn't pretty like Barbie, so this means they look at other little white girls and think they are prettier than them, it's sad. I used to play with these kids none of them had black dolls it was just me, I was a kid I didn't understand the deeper motive behind my aunts practice, so I also felt the same way that Imani wasn't pretty, Barbie was, with the straight long hair and smooth white skin it affected me, I had big curly afro hair my mom loooved it, she never made it straight I Hated it-_-  why did I have to be different? so I nagged and nagged her till she finally did and then I looked at myself and felt I was pretty, nothing is wrong with straightening hair, what's wrong is the idea instilled in us from a very young age that straight hair is beautiful, we need to be able to make up our minds about it
Now I'm grown, I now understand that my aunt and mom were trying to make me see differently from other little black girls, they were trying to make me see that you don't really have to be like everyone else to be called pretty -such amazing parents thou-
With my hand in the media in a few years to come, I'm going to take that initiative, I don't want my little girls to grow up like I did, I want them to be able to make up their own minds about what beautiful means to them