Khoudia Diop Quotes

I wanted to bleach my skin so bad, but my sister always discouraged me. She'd say, 'This is a bad thing. Don't try it.'

And my one prayer to God, the miracle worker, was that I would wake up lighter-skinned.

I'm not bleaching my skin, and if I was bleaching my skin and I felt like saying so, I would, but for the record, I am not.

I mean in the community that I grew up in, you know, a very, you know, mixed, almost entirely African Diaspora community, one of the things that we were not ever supposed to say was how much self-hatred and colorism determined and guided what we would call our desire. In other words, what we would consider beautiful.

When I was, like, 5 years old, I used to pray to have light skin because I would always hear how pretty that little light skin girl was, or I would hear I was pretty to be dark skin. It wasn't until I was 13 that I really learned to appreciate my skin color and know that I was beautiful.

I grew up in Senegal, where more than 50 percent of the women bleach their skin, and skin bleaching is a huge deal. I grew up seeing my cousins and my aunts using it.

I wanted to be pale. I didn't wanna go in the sun, because I was in school with a lot of white girls. I remember one girl said to me, 'You look better pale.' And I was like, 'Well, you're tan!' She was like, 'It's not the same.'

If you were a successful upper-middle-class Negro girl in the 1950s and '60s, you were, in practice and imagination, a white Protestant upper middle-class girl. Young, good-looking white women were the most desirable creatures in the world. It was hard not to want to imitate them; it was highly toxic, too, as we would learn.

When I was in the second grade, one of my teachers said, "Where are you going to find a husband? How are you going to find someone darker than you?" I was mortified. I remember seeing a commercial where a woman goes for an interview and doesn't get the job. Then she puts a cream on her face to lighten her skin, and she gets the job! This is the message: that dark skin is unacceptable. I definitely wasn't hearing this from my immediate family - my mother never said anything to that effect - but the voices from the television are usually much louder than the voices of your parents.

Cosmetic companies are trying to turn India into a nation of Albinos. No dark area on any part of the body. Except maybe our hearts. Got a cream for that?

People wanna say that they're part Native American or mixed, or anything other than black. We're raised to believe that there's something better about not being fully black, something eccentric about it. I'm saying I used to tell girls that I was mixed, which is a bold-faced lie!

I grew up in a predominantly Caucasian community, and most of my friends had blonde hair and blue eyes. So I was always straightening my hair, wearing colored contacts, and I never tanned, if I could help it.

I've heard that I've gotten a lighter complexion, as if I've bleached my skin. I think that is so stupid and ludicrous. For those who want to bleach their skin, that's fine. I just didn't bleach mine. I'm a black woman. I don't want to be anything but a black woman.

I went to a predominantly white school, and I was the only black girl. I can remember thinking, 'I don't want to be as dark as I am - I want to be a little fairer.' I didn't want to be me.

In grammar school some of the girls had problems with me. My face was too light. My hair was too long. It was the black-consciousness period, and I felt really bad.

I'm light skinned, and I used to lean on that because that's something a lot of black people pride themselves on, and it's weird.

Black people can be the most conservative, the most discriminating. Especially among ourselves. It wasn't white people who said all black men have to wear baggy jeans.

I got teased and taunted about my night-shaded skin, and my one prayer to God, the miracle worker, was that I would wake up lighter-skinned. The morning would come, and I would be so excited about seeing my new skin that I would refuse to look down at myself until I was in front of a mirror because I wanted to see my fair face first.

Pop culture says that if a black girl is to be taken seriously, she has to assimilate and be as white as possible, to the point of bleaching her hair blonde.

I think that, as a black girl, you grow up internalizing all these messages that say you shouldn't accept your hair or your skin tone or your natural features or that you shouldn't have a voice or that you aren't smart.

In the 1900s, bleaching lotions and skin-lighteners were a female imperative no matter what her colour, often carrying suggestive names like 'Fair-Plex Ointment' and 'Black-No-More.' The tiniest touch of rouge was allowed, but only if applied with great subtlety.

I love African American women, but I just don't like my skin complexion.

The country has double standards - it's obsessed with fair skin on one hand, but if the woman is white, she is expected to be loose-moraled.

People have accused me of bleaching my skin, of getting a nose job. They squint at my mom, like, 'I didn't know Wendy was Asian.' I am black all day, honey pie. I am black and very proud.

The largest country with the largest consumption of skin bleach in the world is India. Indian men are bleaching their skin because, in terms of marriage, if your skin is dark, it's assumed you work in a field. If your skin is lighter, it's assumed you work in an office because you're not getting enough sun. Indian men are bleaching their skin.