In case you can't change the world

All my childhood clothes have tares in them. Dents in the shape of finger nails where my hands once were. Hands that used to pull at them, specifically, on their lower back side. You see, in the eyes of nine-year-old me, pulling your shirt as far down your behind as possible, could actually hide it. For nine-year-old me, adding one more shirt or a baggy jacket meant that nobody would stare at me as I walked down the street. But as it turned out, nine-year-old me was wrong. An extra layer of fabric couldn’t hide the size of your body. But by the time I had figured that out, pulling at my shirts had become an inescapable force of habit.

 

“One more shirt, a longer jacket, who knows, maybe it will work today. Maybe, I will walk by without having to deal with another comment. Maybe, that random taxi driver won’t make fun of me. Maybe, that stranger on the road won’t tell me to go to the gym. Maybe, that girl at the store won’t tell me to go on a diet.” These were the things that nine-year-old me used to think about, before choosing something to wear. And even getting a longer shirt, didn’t keep my hands from trying to find a way to make it longer. I guess, I didn't understand that having wide hips and a large buttock was simply nature's way of reminding me of my African roots. And I, certainly, didn't realize that having African features was not at all a bad thing.

 

As a light skinned as well as overweight girl in Ethiopia, I found myself on both the long and short end of the social stick. I realized, very early on, that people would take my physical appearance as a prerequisite to how well they treat me. Being overweight, I had faced a lot of negativity and bullying from school and the general public. But then on the other side, I received an immense amount of praise and complements for my lighter shed of skin. However, these complements were coming from people who were criticizing my dark skinned sister and friends. And the criticisms about my weight, were coming from people who were praising that same sister and those same friends for being skinny. This led to me realizing that most Ethiopians, including myself, celebrate predominantly European features I.e., light skin and a petite appearance, while denigrating predominantly African features such as a dark skin and a curvy appearance.

 

Unfortunately, I spent the larger portion of my childhood accompanied by these self-destructive thought patterns. These habits led me to internalize hatred towards my body and its blackness. That was until one summer when I decided to start losing weight. That summer, I decided, was going to be a summer of change and transformation. Hence, I signed up for a three-month swimming course along with a friend who was struggling with the same issues. Long story short, it didn’t work. Partly, because we didn’t diet properly. But it was mostly because the place was filled with so much fun, that we ended up treating it like a three-month vacation instead. So at the end of that summer, I hadn’t lost any weight and my body didn’t change. But I had achieved the thing that I wanted to do at the start of the course: I had changed.

 

It turns out that you can’t pull your shirt down to cover your body if you’re wearing a swimming suit. So, I was forced to stop doing that for three months and essentially forever because I haven’t done it ever since. It also turns out that swimming suits are extremely revealing, so I couldn’t hide other parts of my body either. As a result, I was forced to get used to an environment where I quite literally showed all of my insecurities, which in turn led to me getting used to my insecurities. And eventually, it helped me to realize that the thing I called my insecurity was actually just a body that embraced its blackness to the absolute fullest. It was a body that I would go on to not only accept, but also cherish.

 

My experience, during that summer, started with me doing everything in my power to avoid being seen in my swimsuit. And by the end of it, I was walking around the whole place with nothing but my swimsuit on, even when people were staring and giving unwarranted comments about my body. This was because I had finally gotten to a place of inner peace where comments from the outside just didn’t matter anymore. It also came from a place of understanding that those comments were only being made because of our subconscious inferiority complex that idolizes Eurocentric beauty standards above our own. As a result, even though I hadn’t lost weight by the end of the summer, I wasn’t disappointed. I hadn’t changed my body, nor had I changed my personality. However, I changed the perception I had of myself, of the world around me and most importantly of my body. I had embraced my blackness. I changed from a girl who tried everything in her power to hide her body into a girl that loves and cherishes it despite every negative thing she had heard and believed about it.

 

By the end of that summer, I realized that the world's opinions didn't matter as much as it used to. But that wasn't because the world itself had changed. It wasn't because the community had changed. And it certainly wasn't because people's opinions about my African features had changed. On the contrary, it was because I did. Not in body, but in mind as well as in spirit. I had changed myself, and that is the hardest change anyone could ever make. Because whether the world accepts you or not, whether it actually changes or not, if you change yourself, then in your eyes, the world will also change. So, I will leave you with one suggestion. In case you can’t change the world, change yourself and consequently, change your perception of it. Because the world may still be a place that shames you, but it will never again be a place where you shame yourself.  

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