I was in the shower whispering lullabies of my beauty when I heard it. I don’t normally play music that isn’t in my library but I wanted to try a new thing. Beautiful lyrics floated around the bathroom as song after song played from a curated playlist. Then the words fell like shooting stars aimed at the heart of a little girl who hadn’t yet learned how to have thick skin. I thought of her as I stepped out of the shower to skip the song filled with lyrics that reminded me of a time when I genuinely believed that my self-worth was tightly coiled around the opinions of others.
I spent years teaching myself not to cry every time the world doesn’t acknowledge my beauty. It wasn’t always as easy as a skip in a playlist.
To all the artists who believe their demeaning lyrics aren’t offensive to little brown girls with kinky hair:
You’ll never know what it’s like to live in our world.
To know that we are always too angry, too loud, too bossy, too much.
Rarely too beautiful, too graceful, too kind, too warm.
Your lyrics verify all that we’ve already been told.
What a mess you’ve made of little brown girl dreams.
The Introvert's Escape Maneuver 