Nyakim Gatwech: Embracing the Beauty of Dark Skin

When I was in middle school, I didn’t know how to cope with the negative comments I received daily. Back then, the way I dealt with the negative comments was either locking myself in my room and crying or trying to fight the people that said mean things about me. I knew it wasn’t solving anything. Locking myself in my room was causing me to become depressed and fighting back was getting me suspended from school. My problems weren’t being solved, so I told my sister, “kids are making fun of me because of my complexion. What do I do? I wanna bleach [my skin] and all this stuff.” She told me that [skin bleaching] wasn’t the way to go about it.

She was the shoulder I cried on. We talked a lot. She would give me such great advice and remind me constantly how I am so beautiful and there is nothing wrong with being different. They [the bullying kids] aren’t used to seeing someone that looked like me. They were scared of seeing [someone] different, seeing something new. In high school, I just didn’t care [anymore]. I love myself. I didn’t care what people had to say. I was just like, “you need help if you’re going to talk down to me like that – something is bothering you. You just need a friend, or a hug or something.” In middle school I didn’t know how to cope with the negative comments as much as I did in high school. I grew to learn to love myself.

That is the hardest thing when it’s your workplace. With my fellow models, peers, and friends, I wouldn’t say anything. Sometimes I would go to casting calls and I’d be sitting next to a group of girls and some of them would be nice and say things like, “Oh, hi! Where are you from?” While some [models] would look at me like you’re not a model, you shouldn’t be a model (for whatever reason). I deal with this by not letting myself be bothered or brought down by it. There’s a bigger picture. At first, I was doing it to just prove a point that I’m beautiful too. Now, I’m past that point, I am not just proving a point anymore. I’m standing up for all those little girls who were like me at one point, who are being bullied right now, who are going through the things that I went through.

You can do anything you put your mind to, right now I am doing this for them, for my younger self. For Makeup Artists and photographers, I feel like it has gotten better for me right now. When I shot with photographers in the past, I would do a photoshoot, and its dope, and the photographer would edit it and send me the pictures and they are so light. It’s gotten better, I would talk to them [photographers] and be like “Hey, I’m not trying to be rude, I know this is your job, [this is] something you’re good at, but I feel like this is just too light, its not my complexion, do you think you can tone it down the lightening?” And some of them [photographers] would be like “okay, thank you for letting me know that.” And they would fix it. For the Makeup Artists, when I’m getting my makeup done, either they would put a foundation two shades lighter because they didn’t have my foundation shade and my face would look different from my neck or they would say “Oh you don’t need a foundation” because they just don’t have my foundation. I just started to always carry my foundation with me. Instead of being hurt by it, [thinking] “Oh now I can’t do this photoshoot. My makeup doesn’t look right. I don’t want to offend the photographer”. I am nice about it and say, “Hey I have this foundation that I think is dark enough”. I just have a solution or try to talk in a very kind way, before I just didn’t say anything and go home and cry about it. “I had the worst photoshoot or fashion show”, “I looked so bad on the runway” but now I speak up.

I feel like it’s because I tell my story. I am easy to be connected to. I was willing enough to tell my story about how I got bullied because of my skin color and how I was told I shouldn’t be a model. The fact that I was able to open up and tell my story, is what made it easier for little girls and other models to reach out to me and be like, ‘Hey this is what I’m struggling with, what can I do?’ If I can, I would give them advice. With my story, I was just being myself. I did not plan to write the Uber story. I don’t even know how that came up! Honesty! I was just posting [as usual]! Every time I post a picture on Instagram, I write something motivating.

For the Uber story, I was looking at our skin color, because it’s the first thing you see when you look at the picture. And I just wrote the story [in the caption] and Yahoo! saw it. I feel like the reason they are able to reach out to me is because I am myself. I check my Instagram messages all the time. If you want to send me a message or email, reach out. I will give you the best advice I can. I always put myself in their shoes.