No One Else Can.
Look at the color of my skin.
What do you see?
No, what do you actually see?
I fall into a grey area of black and white, because society has chosen those colors to be the extreme ends of our racial spectrum.
But I think I deserve some look upon the grey, a color maybe not so distinct but still nonetheless a color that is deemed important enough to be involved in a monochromatic scheme.
There always seems to be an unseen pressure wherever I go, as if this permanent hunchback is due to my culture telling me that my journey is less traveled and that it should be kept that way- less traveled.
You see, it is weird, but apparently the views of my culture (well what I thought at first) determine what should be considered successful and what is… well a waste of time.
Apparently, not knowing what to do at the age of 18 is a sin, and having to plan out your wedding what age you will be when that happens is common knowledge.
Apparently I am suppose to think about cooking and cleaning so my husband will stay, because if he left me or cheated on me it’s actually my fault, not his.
Apparently wearing something that exposes an inch of body or even gives a hint of what curves could actually appear in the real world guarantees me to have the word slut plastered on my forehead and dishonor to my family. But it’s alright for the men of my culture to gawk and stare right?
Apparently, being a brown girl only allows me to have two futures: to have a career or to get married. And both have to be immediate actions, not something you could actually plan out for yourself.
‘You’re just a brown girl you have think about your future you can’t just be doing what you want, you’re a girl’
Even now I think about why I was born as a girl. Why have these tits and this vagina if this is the response I am going to get?
Because apparently boys do not have to worry about what they wear, or how they talk, or what they want to do in their life, because they are boys and boys are more desirable for reasons such as… they’re a boy.
Because with girls, you just have to worry about when they should get married, how they should look like to society, when they should have kids, are they pretty enough, are they smart, are they too smart because guys don’t want too smart because they want someone easy to control because who else will take care of the kids, and and and I could go on but why waste my time on questions that are actually… ridiculously stupid.
Yes, I am a brown girl. But I still love my culture. But it is up to my generation to show that it’s not bad that I get periods or that I can house another living thing inside my uterus. It is up to us to show that culture is beautiful but it does label the sexes in any way.
It is the society that has tried to use culture as its ruse to gain its notable fame. But my culture- it is beautiful and it means no harm. But the people parading around it are the ones that have influenced me, and so many others for so long.
Yes. I am brown.
Yes. I am a woman.
But it does not make me any less than a man.
And it does not define my career or my journey or my life goals.
Only I define myself.
No one else can.